Not Quite Finished

My Bag of Beads project for tonight's meeting of the Toronto Bead Society is not quite finished but I'm okay with that. I'm really excited about where it is going.  When I realized I wasn't going to have time to finish a couple of days ago, I decided that rather than rush the last beading bits, I would just finish what I could and save the last hour or two of beading for a later day, when I can relax and enjoy the process instead of rushing to finish just for sake of being done and risk making mistakes or bad decisions in the flurry of the hurry. 

Here's where I'm at as of today:

Jane P. was right when she guessed last week that I was making a journal cover.  But as I've been beading, the ideas have been percolating in my head about what I was making and what it wanted to be (I find that a lot of art happens by letting the art itself lead you along to where it wants to go).  The circus theme came to me about three or four hours in and the more I've worked on it, the more it feels right.  I'll write a longer post in a few days about what it was going to be (something to go on the front of a vintage book) and what it became instead (part of a journal cover of a book that has yet to be made), but in the meantime, here's another sneak peek at how the cover is coming together:

Those at the meeting tonight will see a more polished version, as I've put it all together except for attaching the beaded piece, so I can keep working on that part of it and add it later when it's all done.

Also stay tuned over the next few days for photos of what my fellow TBS members have made, I'm pretty sure they've been making some AWESOME works of art!!