Shifting Tidepools

I legitimately dream of tide pools.  There is something about sea life that has always drawn me and inspired my work - the strange shapes, textures and mysteries the ocean holds.  I am not a beach lover unless its primarily beach combing and looking in tide pools for beautiful creatures.  This particular theme from Art Elements blog is right up my alley.

Honestly, at first I wanted to create my typical bead embroidery version of a tide pool and had some rather unique ideas for accomplishing this, however, I was not very fast on the uptake of ordering the supplies I would need for my initial idea so I decided to go another direction entirely.

I had recently been talking to other beaders who are a part of the Embroiderers Guild of America (EGA) in a nearby city.  There were a lot of interesting things going on in their chapter and I decided I was tired of not being a part of a LOCAL community of like-minded people.  After a little searching I came across a chapter in my tiny city and decided to give it a try.  I met with a number of ladies and while there were not other beaders attending, it was nice to find some people with interests that segwayed into my own.

And then I went down a long and VERY cool Pinterest black hole of embroidery...and it was FABULOUS!  Embroidery is no longer just your grandmother's hobby - it is being turned on it's head and modern embroiderers are doing things with needle and thread that are breaking barriers.  I decided I really wanted to explore this medium a bit and what better time than now?  So I snapped up some supplies and fiddled around with a few random flowers until I figured out what I wanted to do for this challenge.

Once I felt like understood some of the basic techniques I grabbed some colors to start on my tide pool piece.

 

I decided to do radiating long and short stitches to give a gradient look.  First, I chose a deep denimy blue.

Then I added a lighter color, making sure to "blend" by stitching in different lengths between the threads of denim blue.



I continued this process with sea greens until I reached close to the edge of the hoop and stopped...

I didn't really have a goal or end result in mind, which isn't my normal M.O...creating jewelry is nice in that I know the piece will ultimately become adornment.  This was more of an exploration into another medium and finding a way to incorporate it into my repertoire of skills.  I am finding that I like embroidery and want to learn more, especially considering some of the incredible artwork coming out of this arena:

Please join me in seeing all the cool artwork others made with this theme...


Guests:

Raven
Kelly
Cat
Kathy 
Tammy 
Alyson
Elaine 
Mischelle 
Deborah  
Anita 
Jill
Shirlee
Sarajo


AE Team Members:

Caroline
Cathy
Claire
Jen 
Laney 
Lesley 
Marsha 
Niky
Sue
Lindsay
Melissa
Jenny