Walking Through Fire

Beauty is never apparent when you first meet someone. I am using beauty ubiquitously and not gender specific here. When I meet someone I never trust what my eyes are telling my brain, I want to wait, I want to listen to what my heart says and disregard the visual information that I am met with. I find that the better I know someone, the better I can see them. The true beauty, the inner beauty translates to that person's physical appearance, and it becomes what I see. It has always been this way for me. When I first noticed it happening, it was startling, I could not understand how the person I met just morphed into something completely different in front of my face. Over time, I have accepted that this is going to happen, and I enjoy seeing that beauty reveal itself. Sometimes happens slowly, other times it is quite fast, but it is one factor that I have been able to set my internal barometer by. The more I see this beauty develop in someone, the more comfortable I am with them, because I know I am on to something good.

I am surrounded by amazing people. Beautiful people. People that I met, and at the time, had no idea they would influence my life and my thinking the way they do now. I keep meeting these beautifully amazing people. I am the type of person that charges face first into situations assuming everything is what it appears to be at first evaluation. Most of the time they are. Luna was not. (I am again using an alias for another friend). When I met Luna, she was going by Louis at the time. Louis appeared to me to be an average guy, just starting his job with Von and myself. The three of us were great friends right off the bat, and I could not be happier to have them both by my side during this new venture. As the friendship with Louis grew deeper, he revealed that he was transitioning. I only knew a few cursory things about his situation at the time, and I just happened to ask the right question, and that was when Luna told me who she really was. She was not ready to reveal to everyone around her at the time that this was going on, so for a very long time, I was entrusted with this information. I guarded it closely until she was ready to come out.

I have no idea what to live as someone different than who you present as. I would not even presume to venture a guess, because unless you are going through it, what is there to compare to? She gambled on every relationship she ever made, using her happiness as currency. and it is not even over yet. She has told her world what she wants to do, who she wants to be, and now she has to actually go through this long  process of change. She could have lost any one of these relationships, but for her, it was more important to be herself. I can get behind that. It might be scary to think that someone is going to hate you for trying to be yourself, but who needs that person in your life anyways? I know we are living in an era that is more accepting than any that has come before, and I am extremely grateful for that, but she is still made of far stronger stuff than I am. That is the only way I can  express how I see the strength in fluidity.

When I set out to design her piece I wanted to capture that fluidity, the strength, and the inner fire. This piece was probably the most deliberate item I have worked on since I started beading.I am not a deliberate person when it comes to design. I prefer to design on the fly and never really commit until I know it is right. When it came to color, I had a big palette to chose from. Her colors were orange, purple, brown and some greens. I had a lot of leeway there, there were many combinations that would have been just fine. I entertained the idea of brown orange and green, because it just smacks of nature, and there would be plenty of metaphor to be found there. Trees, day/night cycle, season, moths butterflies, moon phases. She also has that whole hippy vibe about her. To easy. I decided I did not want to be that concrete with the theme, I wanted more abstract. I went with a grapey matte purple for the main color with bronze metals, and a fiery orange contrast. I also had some rivolis that I was in love with mostly purple but flashed this brilliant orange in the right lights.

 When I first got my materials together, I had selected a large round Swarovski sun pendant as the main focal, and this is where I found myself deviating from my norms again with this piece. I let the recipient have a say in a major piece of the work. I showed her the focal and she seemed pretty noncommittal about it as a whole. I started pulling out other things and the second I saw this cab, I knew it was the one. I handed it her, and her eyes just lit up. Awesome. I have a dark purple  canvas and a lighter purple focal. What am I supposed to do with that? As she observes the sea sediment, she flips it over and she hands it to me and says "This side." I look and there is this little flaw, this small imperfection in the middle of the stone. She loves it, and now I have to rethink my design once again.

At this point I am at a bit of a loss. I have some bicones in the matching purple for the center stone, so pulling in that lighter color was going to be simple but it was that teardrop center, I could not think of a way to incorporate it the way I had begun seeing this piece. I had always wanted something asymmetrical, and I had a plan for that asymmetry when the focal was round. I was not dealing well with having that plan changed on me. I opted to ignore the focal, and instead work on the rope. I knew that this piece needed to be versatile, so I wanted a rope that was elegant, yet substantial enough to stand on its on should she want to wear it without the focal. I had seen a necklace that I loved that employed the use of herringbone in stripes of varying thicknesses, and I loved the look of it, but herringbone was too dense. I settled for chenille stitch instead, the open lacier look lended some delicacy to what would be a pretty thick rope. I did the bobbles in herringbone with 2 different sized seed bead, and it gave the rope some weigh. the transitions from chenille to herringbone were incredibly easy, and just as easy going back. It worked seamlessly.

When it came to the clasp, I kept it simple, and just worked it in the matte purple, but the rope ends, I did not want to just round them off. I opted instead for some herringbone bead caps, and closed the gaps with orange bicones. The rope at least was done.

Now I had to move on to the focal, and I was dreading it. I had this picture of what I wanted it to look like, and I could not get the asymmetry to line up the way I wanted with this teardrop shaped focal, at least in my mind. Oh well, I still had to do the bezel. This was the first time I had tried to enclose a teardrop shaped cab. It was one of the most frustrating things I had attempted up to this point. I must have made 6 attempts at it before I finally got it right. The bezel turned out amazingly well for the amount of struggle that went into it, if not a little on the tight side. It gave be a really sturdy canvas to work on. So now I was left facing the dilemma that I had been avoiding from the beginning. How was I going to work out this focal piece? I talked with Von, she seemed to think I should keep it simple, as Luna is not much of an extrovert. Simple was never really an option though. I had followed Luna's Pinterest feed, and I had a pretty solid understanding of what kinds of style she was into, so I started sketching. I took the cab I had bezeled and put it on paper, traced around it and came up with a few different designs, each build for the cab itself. Nothing was striking me as the right design, so I came back to that asymmetric idea again.

After the sketching, I was drawn to the one that was closest to my original idea. I showed Husbeast, and he chose that same sketch as well. He made a comment about the duality it exhibited. That was it, all I needed to hear. The sketch does not reflect the finished piece as well as it did in my head, but that was ok. I started working on the fringe side of the cab, using a mix of bronze seed beads, capped with the milky purple bicones, the orange bicones, and dark purple pearls. At the bottom of the cab, the fringe comes together in this chunky longer cluster that comes up to the edge of the bezel. This section is capped off by larger fire colored bicones layered so there is this intense pop of orange there.

The rivs, I had beaded already, and from the beginning, even with the other cab, they were always intended to cross the main point, and slide down one side of the cab. I kept that element, and began to work m y way up on side of the cab maintaining the spacing so the 4th riv landed at the apex of the cab. This is where I had a complete meltdown. The asymmetry I was striving so hard to achieve was gone. The focal was completely symmetrical. The sides did not match, but there was no discernable imbalance. I was completely irate, and the necklace went to the timeout corner while I sulked over it for a week. While we spent time apart, I started thinking about how to attach the focal to the rope. The intention had always been to make the necklace versatile. I wanted the rope to be able to be worn independently, I wanted the focal to be able to be worn on different ropes, or even with ribbon or really whatever Luna wanted to do with it. I realized that I had kinda shot myself in the foot as far as simple bails go when I made those bobbles. A peyote loop would be a mess at that size and would totally destroy the look I was going for. I searched around and found a bail that would work. Kassie Inman has this incredible bail design for sale in her shop, The Beading Butterfly. Awesome instructions in pdf format, and very easy to read and follow. This was just the bail I needed. it was flexible enough to slip over the bobbles and would not distort at all. I whipped one up and as I did I started to realize that the asymmetry was not gone, this bail just needed a rivoli off one side of the bail! BAM! It was everything I had hoped it would be,

So I finished this piece in August. As you can see by the date, it has taken me a long time to write this post (Sorry Luna, I know you have been waiting). Over the past year I have watched Luna start to become herself. Each step she takes might seem small, but with every step, I see her shake off those preconceptions that people have of her, I see her challenge her own misgivings and come out a winner. I just wanted to give her something that was completely hers, something that was made for her with no one else in mind. I want to thank you for the beauty you have brought into my life.

Happy beading!
 :D