Ah, the lion is done. Doesn't he look  ready to pounce? That hair is really wild. When I took the last of the plastic bags off of him it was ruinously flattened. Without thinking I grabbed up Bu's cat brush and whoosh! there was this. What I forgot to show you in the photo is his lion-hearted chest. As I was finishing up this very last section, I suddenly got the idea to add a red heart and it fit in perfectly. I think I had hearts on my mind as on Friday my oldest daughter, Heidi is having a heart ablation. She is a lot more calm about it all than I am.
When I finished and was searching for the next animal I kept feeling I had made this decision but could not remember what it was. So I started this brontosaurus with the hope I could make him into a dragon but his face is all wrong. He has such a sweet attitude that I do not think he has the spirit to be dragon material.

Now, at my computer in the light of day I see the lion from the Boyd's collection that has sat beside me for over 15 years. I wanted to give him a beaded life. Maybe next time! if I can survive the days of not having him by my monitor.

The way the lion leans it looks as if he is enjoying getting his back scratched with a needle. Normally I do not like to follow the spine with the bead rows (it is hard to maneuver the needle at the neck and often at the tail) but this guy's butt is so cute I felt I had no choice.  I will show you when I get it done. Never have I had to use the plastic bags so long but between catching the mane fur and the ears and the pads on the front feet, I am very thankful to have found this way of keeping them out of the way of the thread.
The shipment of my latest EBay win arrived so now I have 7 of the dinosaur animals which I am hoping to be able to make into dragons. I tried making a dragon with the seahorse but it had no legs. I thought of beading legs but gave up on that idea so I am glad to have these. There are also a couple of camels in the box. . . a beaded nativity set?

That pink on the flamingo stopped me so much yesterday that I actually tore up and redid the butt on the Ronald McDonald clown before going back to it. I really hate cutting apart a finished character so I realized how much more I was hating that pink if it could bring me to this job.That gave me the courage to set the flamingo aside and let myself go with this lion. The great thing here, on a 2000 animal, is the fact that they used a smooth material for the body. That is so much easier to bead than it was fighting with the plush on the Garcia bear. However that long fuzzy mane was problematic until I resorted to the old plastic sandwich bag trick. I did not want to stick it down with tape for fear of pulling it out. I feel the bead color is better than the fabric color so I am happy to relax with this beast. A rainy day and the highway is closed because the Garcia River is flooded so I can sit by the fire and bead on a happy lion that gives me courage and happy thoughts.

So the Bird Bear is done. You can almost see the tiny blue bird insignia on his chest. What you cannot see is the better way I did the butt. He sits up right. The Ronald McDonald bear does not. I am thinking of redoing it. Ah if only we all could get a repair butt job!
Thanks to the visit from Sue on Sunday and her suggestion, I am starting the flamingo. I cannot believe I am exposing myself to more of this terrible pink color! After seeing this photo I am thinking that the transparent pink beads are not really strong enough to compete. At this point it looks like a flamingo disease!

Absolutely no beads were used or harmed in this project. Thirty-three members of the AHAforum wanted to make an anthology of their work and we did it! The book did cut into my beading time on a few occasions so I am especially delighted to have this done. Since this is my brag-spot blogspot I can say out loud how marvelous I find the cover. That is the work of my hands. About 15 years ago I was on a roll with this kind of painting. When the guy who was supposed to do the cover pancaked on me (well he did offer a design with three big sperm on the cover and refused to remove them) I dug into the old files and found this unused painting. I loved finding the whimsical characters drawn in among the muck.

The new wings arrived so I gave the evening to the angels. Made a whole tray full of these until I ran out of stars. Maybe I should back up and explain. Last summer when Bill Elmore came to me asking if I would bead limpets so he could glue them to beach rocks. His plan was to do this so kids, and parents, would find these little treasures and have the surprise and fun we used have when we found a penny on the sidewalk. I got the idea of making these angels to be tossed overboard into the sea. When I found out much plastic junk is already floating out there, I changed the plan to plant these in open places on land. Sus at Gualala Arts Center did a whole bagful for summer school and Art in the Redwoods. Recently I sent some to Caran in La Jolla. She was so delighted, and eager to place them with the help of her girl friends. Then she got the idea of making her own gift in a little box. I think we could call this the World Crackerjack Box Project. We are treating our everyday environments like the Crackerjack boxes with the little prize. The plastic boxes are about 1 x 2 inches and just deep enough to hold a teardrop pearl angel.

I am slowly getting rid of that terrible pink! It took a couple of tries before I found the best purple for the pants. One that looked perfect in the tube was too gray next to the yellow and another kind of beads proved too big. I really do like the Preciosa beads. This color gives the feeling of tweed which I find very good. With the rows of beads it seems like tweed corduroy.
Yesterday I revamped my Etsy site. I took down all the jewelry and posted as many of the animals as I could. Have more to do. I also realized that I have not done big photos for many of the latest ones. I tried to photograph them but the sun comes in at such a slant I have about 15 minutes of good light. As Vicki pointed out, it is good to post a new page or two each day, to catch people watching the new items. However, I wanted the page to feel Christmas-like with all the animals and it does.
I had sent some of the guardian angel project boxes to Caran and she was inspired to do some of her own. That excites me very much! She seemed pleased with my angels so I am eager to see what she does.