Prototype: Steam Powered Listening Device
Published On: 11-25-2011 10:28pm
Comments: 0 - Hits: 11
Category: New and Shiny
Learning to do bead weaving has opened whole new avenues of creativity and inspiration! Living with and otherwise having creative friends also helps. The Steam Powered Listening Device is the brainchild of my friend Mickey and I. Mickey is one of my roommates and I also sometimes blog with her at Geek Girls Rule! It was my partner Carl who came up with the name I liked best: Steam Powered Listening Device.
It's created from and empty watch case - which I kept after harvesting all the watch parts. It's kind of ironic that months later I end up putting random watch parts in it again. I then filled it with Ice Resin. The beading around it is a combination of the Peyote stitch and the Square stitch. The plan is that each bug will be a little different. I wasn't sure how I felt about this one when I first completed it but it grew on me. The "eyes" of this bug are black lined crystal seed beads. I think next time I'll go with more color. I was not at home when I completed it and had a limited pallet with me so I gave those a try. I just think they are a bit too subtle.
I've considered making pins out of them. The problem is that brooches haven't been a big seller for me so far and the watch cases I have are on the smallish size so I'm not sure any pin backs aside from the hat pin kind would even fit. This one happened to have a perfect end for stringing on a necklace so that's what I did.
This one will not be sold. Wearing it around and showing to people allows me to find any design flaws there might be and see how much interest is generated in it. Okay and it's also because I rarely remember to make something for myself and sometimes you just have to!
Now that I have a better idea of how to go about making these "bugs", I will keep better track of my time so I can figure out how to price it. This is a labor intensive design so it will need to be priced accordingly (see a previous post I did on that subject for what figuring that out entails). Experimenting with things like this and combining various bead weaving stitches is a fun and rewarding process. I highly recommend it!
