My friend, Lindsay Starr of Phantasm Creations, made the components for the January Component of the Month challenge over at the Art Elements blog. She made cabs out of leather, then domed (using a wet molding technique she outlines here) and painted them. I jumped at the chance when she offered to send me one so I could participate in her challenge and this is what she sent:
I chose some colors of cord I thought might look good with the cab, as well as a few seed beads.
Then I started knotting.
This was my first attempt at a bezel and I cut it apart before I even got a photo of it on the cab. Strike one. I really hated the front of it, although I think the back side (shown) was pretty fun. It came up too far on the front of the cab and the dark color really washed out the colors on the leather. I went back to the drawing board and chose a cord color I never would have considered at first: olive green.
Strike two. I didn't even finish this one. Although I liked the color better, it was still covering up too much of the cab. In desperation, I finally resorted to punching holes all around the edge of the leather and pulling my cord through it. Boy, was that a lot of work and boy, was I wishing I'd had Lindsay do it when she offered (translated: Linsday knows what she's doing with leather and I'm just muddling through).
On the plus side, though, I like this approach. I added a few rows of knotting and a row of seed beads, then finished it off with some curly scallops.
All that was left to do was hang it from a knotted cord and add a dangle at the bottom:
