That Beaded Dragon and renewing creativity

Madeleine L'Engle wrote about how she played the piano when she felt creatively stuck.  For me, working on my stuffed dragon helped get me out of a creative slump.  I love it, although it will be a terribly heavy neck pillow when all is said and done.

Here are some shots of my progress:

Close-up of progress after day 2.

 My dragon just chills out on the couch between beading sessions.

Progress after day 3.  I love adding those gemstones down the back.

Stay tuned for more photos of the dragon in progress!

Vanessa Walilko

Aluminum chainmail jewelry

Handmade jewelry

Dragon plush necklace

There are few things more satisfying than working on a project that's been sitting in a box untouched for a few years.  I got it in my head the other day that I really should finish this dragon soft sculpture necklace/fancy neck pillow.

Some ideas pop into my head and I make them immediately, some need to percolate a bit.  This originally started out as a big sculpture that would wind around my body, but I settled on something bold but still wearable.

Now I just need to start working on the bead embroidery, which will take another few years, probably.  But the body is finally done, which makes me very happy.

Personalized jewelry
Anodized aluminum jewelry

Epic beadwork

When I finished my scale mail cropped jacket, I was thrilled that it was done, but a little sad, too. What was I going to work on now? Well, I've decided to make a return to a few things that I haven't done a lot of in a while: sewing and beading.

My latest piece is a giant soft sculpture dragon with bead and stone embellishments. It's still in the preliminary stages, but I love the way the head is coming out with the carved stone horns and the lampwork eyes. Oh, and I was lucky enough to just have some orange fabric just sitting around that looks like scales. Hooray!

Also, I started work on Tiamat again. I just put on some This American Life of MST3K and bead away. I'm in the final third now, I just have to fill in the space around the cuneiform characters. There's a certain amount of meditative repetition that occurs with chainmaille. Not so with bead embroidery. I have to think so much about where the next splash of color is going to go that I can only work on it for a couple hours before getting frustrated and/or exhausted... but the payoff is worth it.

Vanessa Walilko