Experimenting with the 2023 Toho Challenge kit...
So I've been playing around with the Toho Challenge kit for this year. While I don't have any real hopes of being a winner, I figure I'll at least play with it and if I make something I really like, throw my hat in the ring.
This year's theme is based on Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay.
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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Unsurprisingly this means there's a lot of gold in the kit. That being said, I am surprised there aren't more dark colours considering the themes of impermanence and loss as well as winter. However, I guess the winter is not a prologue to spring? While it b may not be be implied by Mr Frost's poem, things may wither but such times pass and good things, if sometimes different ones may bloom.
Either way, I've been playing around with them to see what I can make. Keep in mind I'm an intermediate level bead weaver and I'm used to working with seed beads that aren't the same size and I'm not using any pattern; thus these are rough at times.
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The beads. Forgive the massive amount of lint. Bead mats attract the stuff like magnets.
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Attempts at making leaves. Yeah, I know how to make leaves other ways but I decided to play mad scientist on these.
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A little bit of wrapping beads with beads.
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A small foray into flat stich.
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Earlier attempts at peyote stitch with the unusually shaped beads. If you look closely, you can see the thread more than you ought to.
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Much improved.
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I'm curious as to what else I'll come up with.
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