New Angel Bead

I've upgraded my simple little angel and here's the new one. I didn't want this angel to be feminine.  If anything, I think if angels as more masculine.  Of course angels do not have genders, but even their biblical names are more masculine than feminine.  I was also thinking of my son, Liam, who has a fascination for angels.  I wanted an angel he would connect with, so I started with this sketch...

The sketch

Liam was soooo impressed my little drawing that he wanted to help with the whole bead. He's never been so interested in my bead work!  It was kind of flattering, actually.  He is very generous with his compliments :)

Here's the hardest part of the whole bead: The face.  It's not what I had in mind, but in the end, it didn't matter anyway.  In the small rosary beads, you can't make out any features in the face.  In the bigger bead versions, it looks my angel is singing.  That's not a bad thing. Most of the angels are singing before the throne of God without stop- so this is pretty accurate!

Then came the upper body...

The praying hands and arms- the second hardest part of the this bead. Kind of tricky!

The lower body...

And the part I had been waiting for- the majestic angel wings.  I knew this would be fun to do and it was!

Then I put on the blue background. I had hard time deciding whether to make it circular or square.  I decided on circular and I'm glad I did because I had just enough blue clay to make a perfect circle.

And here's what the kids got to with the babysitter while I worked- well, at least the last day that I worked on this bead....

Babysitter + her young brother + blow up pool and perfect weather = day 'o fun

The reduction process:

The final product... Yeah!

 

Now I'm on to my next bead...