The Birth of Flaming Teeth -- Part 1

Welcome to the first installment of my series on the creation of my contribution for the 2008 Layne's Legacy -- Beading For a Cure project. As I've doubtless mentioned before on this blog, BFAC is a very important cause, dear to my heart, so I'm always eager to create something new and hopefully exciting for it. So, let's start by taking a look at this year's kit, created by Sandi of Stormcloud Trading:Included are Japanese seed beads in five colors, Czech chicklet-shaped beads in pearly white, Swarovski crystals in three sizes and five colors, and one lampworked bead donated by Lois Oster of Wolf Song Designs. This is a challenging kit for me, due to my lack of love for opaque seed beads (except for black, of course), and my extra lack of love for the color yellow. On the other hand, I love black, I love lampwork, I love fire colors, and ohmigosh look at all the sparkly crystals! Sandi even included those awesome new 2mm crystals.

My project for this year is called Flaming Teeth, and it is inspired by a Fijian myth, which you can read on Encyclopedia Mythica. For some reason, that just struck me as one of the best "How man got fire" stories ever. It could be because "Flaming Teeth" is such a wicked, evocative name. I'm envisioning a nice, spiky collar, with a heavy emphasis on the black and orange elements in this kit.

I started Flaming Teeth last night, working during my weekly Legend of the Five Rings game. I always like to have beads during games, and the base row of this project was a pretty easy task for the evening. If only I could complete it in one evening. This is my progress:Not that impressive yet, I'm afraid. Just a simple black strip of beadwork. This will be the base upon which the entire necklace works off of, however. Humble beginnings for a more elaborate piece. Already today I've more than doubled its length. Without my friends and gaming to keep my mind occupied, I have to turn to music so I don't get bored with this very repetitive stitch. Today's beading was done while listening to Rakshasa by The Black Drum and Annwyn Beneath The Waves by Faith and the Muse.

Tomorrow will of course be Fashionable Friday, so I won't be posting Part 2 of this series until at least Saturday. By then I hope to have the base strip finished!

Today's Cool Thing is Jen Kuhns' absolutely amazing baby dragon and egg, which is one of this week's BFAC auctions! I am a huge fan of Jen's work and I am so glad to see this auction getting many bids. I can't wait to see what it ends at!