More beaded talons

I've actually finished eight of them, but I got a little camera happy after finishing four. Here's the picture.



On to the gauntlets!

Vanessa Walilko
Beaded armor, unique beaded jewelry, chainmaille jewelry, Chicago chainmaille classes, and chainmaille fashion

Tiamat beaded talon fingertips

In the midst of trying to wrap my head around just how I was going to manage adding all those beads and stones to the Tiamat dress, I decided to start working on the accessories. I wanted to do something repetitive that I wouldn't have to think too much about. That way, my subconscious could work out how to line up all the beads and I could still work on the project. It's win-win.

The result is this: the beaded talon fingertip. I wanted to give Tiamat claws, for while the Enuma Elish doesn't describe her as a dragon, she does give birth to dragons and monsters, so I imagine her to have claws... and horns. I'm looking for excuses to use my onyx talons, I admit it.


Vanessa Walilko
Beaded dragons, beaded armor, chainmaille jewelry, and chainmaille classes

In progress - The Tiamat Dress

I was much too obsessed with my chainmaille jacket when I was working on it to actually to the in progress photos I had originally planned on doing. However, I decided to take photos of the dress while it was in progress, since this is the most epic project I've ever worked on.

Of course, when I say progress, I really mean, "fussily obsessing about where things are going to go next." I'm working, right now, on placing the cuneiform characters. I managed to find a PDF of the transliteration of the first 100 lines of the Enuma Elish, and the original cuneiform characters. After some editing, I sized the characters in relation to the width of seed beads and came up with a good scale for the characters in relation to the dress.

in any case, that was months ago. Today I was only concerned with the position of the characters--how they would flow with the dress. I came to this formation--the vertical formation is the characters for Mummu Tiamat.

For anyone interested in reading the Enuma Elish, you can find the full text here. These are the first four lines of the epic, taken from the site listed:

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
When primordial Apsu, their begetter,
And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all

Here's how they look in relation to the whole dress:

Back to work!

Vanessa Walilko
Handcrafted beaded jewelry, chainmaille jewelry, beaded armor, and beaded sculpture

Dreams of the Fallen

Thanks to a trip to Milwaukee on Friday and some last minute scheduling, I got my big collar/capelet photographed by Larry Sanders. I just sent it off to the Bead Dreams competition. Wish me luck!



Vanessa Walilko
Chainmaille, beadwork, art