Winston Beauregard Pennyfeather the Third

Totally just made that name up, but it sounds good with "the Third", and really, that's what matters.

This ornament grew out of an idea, and a picture, and a short stroke of genius. I've seen Navajo-style beaded earrings for years, but never really paid much attention to them. I don't wear that style of dangly-ness. However, my husbeast's great grandfather was a Native American (Sioux) and his brother-in-law is a member of the Spokane Tribe. My great grandmother was supposedly Cherokee, but I can't find anything in the Dawes Rolls to confirm or deny this. She was adopted by white people as far as I know.

Also, I hate fringe. You actually may have noticed that very few of my ornaments sport fringe. That's pretty much because I hate making it. It always ends up too stiff and pokes out, like the hair on those crimp and style Cabbage Patch Kids from the '80s, you know, the ones with yarn-with-a-core-of-wire hair?

Anyway, off my fringe topic, and back to the task at hand. I had a very specific pallette in mind. I wanted to use the basic colors of opaque seed beads, Light Blue, Black, Red, Orange, Yellow, and White. I have two of these colors in my travel bead box (guess which two :) ) I decided, no problen, Craft Store Bulk Bag Size 10-ish Beads will do, and they had a mixed baggie of just the colors I needed. I usually only use craft store beads for French beaded flowers (look, I'm not using 3 tubes of beads that cost $8-9/each when a baggie of craft store beads at a cost of $.99/ea will suit-jewelry is a different story).



Long story short, 98% of those beads should have been culled. Dark red was the absolute worst. Those beads were significantly smaller than all their counterparts-I would say close to size 11. The orange were the opposite. The others were fat, thin, tall, short, oblong, etc. What a nightmare.

I muscled through, and in the end, I am really. really happy with the look of this one. I've never seen another ornament like it, ever.



I used the craft store size 10-ish beads, silver jump rings, and little silver colored feather charms. On a positive, I think my total materials cost for this ornament was like $2.00.