What began as a fanciful idea in my head to create my first piece of bead embroidery has become a two month-long project so far in creating an entire neck-piece. I discovered the art of bead embroidery at the beginning of this year, and was so smitten with the idea that I began dreaming up designs immediately. As is often the nature of my inspirational flashes, I saw an embroidered eye in fine detail in my mind as I sat one evening half watching T.V. and half pawing through a new book on bead embroidery. So I grabbed my sketchbook and pens and began sketching.

There were a number of variations on the eye theme that I drew, however I decided to keep to my original design. The beads and the colours I envisaged for this piece were so specific that I had some difficulty finding suppliers for some of them…