Take a gander at this little beauty inspired by beautiful Nature!

New necklace inspired by beautiful Nature!

I recently had the good fortune to take a long, wonderful walk across some of the beautiful farmlands of Pennsylvania. My husband and I took a picnic and we walked across wide open fields and up to a pond that we love to visit.

View from the open fields. Isn't it breathtaking?!

The pond. So beautiful.

Along the way we saw a beautiful bird circling above, and we think it was a golden eagle. She circled several times high above our heads, and a little while later we came upon four feathers that probably came from this species. I picked them up and looked closely at them - they were a beautiful dark brown with barely perceptible bands of black. Some of them had white tips. Gorgeous.

Beautiful bird circling high overhead.

So after squishing around in the lovely early spring mud, we made our way back to the car.

Spring runoff making lovely squishy mud and beautiful reflections.

Gorgeous place!

Whenever I go walking in this place, I am always just a little sad when it's time to go home. But I brought the beauty of it along with me, and started working on a new peyote stitched cabochon necklace, inspired by the colors in the feathers from the winged one who soars so close to the sun.

Tea-stained sun/moonface cabochon

I wanted to bring some of the brown color to the sun/moonface hand-carved bone cabochon I planned to use, so I soaked it in some good black tea for a while, checking on it every few minutes. Doesn't take long for the bone to soak up some color.

Then I chose the colors of the beads, trying to restrain myself to about three colors (those of you who know me well know this is a huge challenge, because I LOVE color, lol). I picked copper, cream, and black - the colors in the petrified wood cabochon that I chose to go along with the sun/moonface.

Here you can see the beautiful colors in the petrified wood cabochon.

I wanted a bit of a geometric design, so I used copper seed beads to illustrate the wave of love coming from this little sun/moon person. I added a collar of Czech glass flower and leaf beads. Then I added cream colored beams like the sunlight we saw slanting over the farmlands, and a bit of black for contrast and balance.

This piece includes peyote stitch around the cabs, line stitch every two beads on the background, and stop stitch on the textured background. Gemstones include beautiful agate and tiger's eye for the color in the bird feathers we saw, onyx, and natural shell as well as some bone beads. The backing is soft black ultrasuede.

The finished necklace, isn't she beautiful!

The finished piece includes a necklace of twisted seed beads with a couple of copper colored accent beads. Necklace length is 23 inches, total with cabochons is 30 inches. Slips easily over the head to sit about mid-chest.

This piece will be on display at the Bellefonte Art Museum May 17 - visitors are welcome from 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Come see it and try it on! Feels wonderful!

It's for sale, and will go up on Dreamkeeper Creations after the 17th.

I am grateful for the lovely inspiration that Nature offers. And I LOVE doing this work, which mostly feels like play. 49 and a half hours encompassing thousands of beads, most of which were sewn down one by one or two by two. Frank Sinatra crooning along in the background. Good times!