Solo Making Beads

[Taylani]

90 Fall 513, late evening before sleep.

Sitting in the sitting area of the pavilion, all the Windchaser's happily sleeping in their respective areas, Taylani sets out her bag of goodies. Things that she had scavenged during her foraging forays. Things that might not have seemed to be too important to the other foragers but caught her eye. Every piece was something that she would be able to bore into with her small hand bit, to make beads.

She preferred the glass beads that Fallan and she had purchased but sometimes other mediums called her. Today it was pieces of bone that she had taken from a meal. Most bones were re-purposed for tools, but there are some that are not useful to many. Things like the pelvic bone of a glassbeak, they are hard and tilted and are too large to make too much jewelry from unless you take the time to bust it, and then hope that you don't fracture it which would render any piece made from it impossible to make strong again. However she had thought it would make a good painters palette, even if she was not a painter.

Today she was working with the spine of an animal, she wasn't sure which. It was being hauled away from one of the butchers. The spine is not useful in many tools because it is not one continuous bone but multiple vertebra. However, for a jeweler it is a very nice scavenge if one knew what they were doing. Taylani didn't really know all that there was, far from it as she was trying to teach herself with only bits of remembrances from watching her mother. However she knew how to make bracelets from the bigger vertebra that were located along the back. And now she was testing making larger 'beads' from the smaller vertebra located near the neck.

So she pulled apart the cleaned bones, placing them in different order. The larger ones she would make bracelets, bangles, and perhaps some brooches out of. The smaller ones she was going to attempt to make beads from. This would entail carving, painting and polishing but she thinks that she can do it.

She picked up of the small vertebra, turning it over and over in her hand. Looking at it closely, shifting, gauging its weight. She picked up the pebbled paper and began to rub it roughly over the top of the bone, creating fine white powder that coated her hands and legs as she worked. She worked at polishing the bone, her hand moving back and forth, left and right until the bone felt smooth as glass. She slowly did this with all the bone pieces. It took her a while, and she had to discard the paper she started with and get the last piece of her sanding paper that had came with her kit. She was going to have to find a trader who had some for sell, perhaps when Endrykas moved around Riverfall in the spring.

The thought of Riverfall filled her heart with sadness for it remained an emblem of her old life. Where she had hoped to dance at the amphitheater. However she squashed that quickly, focusing on her work at hand. When all the vertebra were smoother then silk, Taylani put away the large pieces for working on another day. Then she picked up the scriber and one of the smaller bones.

[Taylani]

The scribe is held in her right hand, the bone firmly in her left. She had no clue what was significant, what she wanted to bead so she simply free handed designs. This bead there were a series of leaves, they looked a little sloppy, some of them were fatter then the others. Taylani didn't like them but she was not so rich as to throw out a good bead. Perhaps she will make a necklace with it and it won't be so obvious that it was done by an inexperienced hand. She wipes that bead with a piece of cloth, to remove flecks of bone and debris and sets it aside. One down, thirteen more to go.

The second one she picks up, she simply scribes squiggly lines in the white bone. Random lines, that swirl and looped across the surface with no apparent pattern. This one was easier because there was nothing that was suppose to be the same. So when her hand trembled or shook it didn't look so jarring like it did on the leaves.

This one she liked much better, and like the first, she picked up the cloth and wiped it clean of dust and bone debris. She set that one aside too. The third bone she picked up, the scribe in hand pressing into the bone, was bent in circles. Large circles, tiny circles, fat circles, and skinny circles, just round and round on the bone. This was another one she liked. If she could avoid a set pattern or particular picture then it wouldn't show as much that she was a beginner.

The third is polished and set aside with the other two. Taylani continues through the last ten bone pieces, always trying to stay in random patterns rather then true pictures. Some of them came out great, others she was not so fond of but all were polished carefully and set aside.

Once done she stood and made her way outside to the rain barrel that was mostly empty. Tomorrow they would be moving on, and find another stream so there was no reason to keep it full when they would just have to dump it for easier traveling. There was enough in there though to use the leather beaker of Fallan's that he had tried to get her tipsy in not so long ago, to fill with water to mix her paints.

[Taylani]

The last time that she had painted anything it was the bracelet that she had made for her child. Then she had made the three simple colors of red blue and yellow. However she had learned that mixing red and yellow together gave a rather pretty color of orange so today she took six beakers for water. Hoping to experiment with the paints.

Settling the beakers down on the ground in front of her, Taylani took a file from her jewelry kit and laid it beside them as well. Then she put the tiny paintbrush beside them as well before pulling out the powders. In the first three beakers she added simple single powders. To make red, blue and yellow paint. She added the powder a little at a time, stirring with her file until the paint had the proper consistency. Then she would wipe the file before doing a new color, this was to keep three primary colors pure.

Then she sat and considered the remaining choices. The first clear water beaker she added a little bit of blue, and then a little bit of red powder. Using the file she mixed and was pleased to see a dark purple color begin to bloom in the water. She added a little more of each powder trying to thicken the paint. When the purple started to take on a blue hue she would add more red, until the paint was thick as she wanted.

The next beaker of water she thought for a moment and then added yellow powder with the red powder and once again was rewarded with the orange. This one was more delicate because she kept trying to get the exact same shade of orange as she got on the bracelet with little luck. It would take more practice it seemed to be able to get the right shade with any sort of consistency.

The final clear beaker she added blue and green, and was amazed at the brilliant green that emerged. The more yellow she added the lighter green, which she liked. It ended up being almost an aquatic green that she liked so much. She doubted she would be able to recreate the shade without practice, but for now she was happy with it.

Each paint was now mixed, and Taylani used the cloth that she had wiped the bone fragments off on to clean the file carefully. The rag was smeared with color but it only made it look colorful rather than dirty. Picking up the first bead she had carved, the ones that were leaves she wrinkled her nose again. She did not like how those leaves came out at all. But she had an idea on what she wanted to try. She took the bead and dropped it in the pure yellow paint mixture, fishing it back out without care that her fingers were turned yellow. Now the entire thing was yellow, and she held it over the beaker to allow the excess paint to drip off back into the container. She then used the paint brush to run the entire bead, capturing even more excess paint to scrape back into the beaker. Now that was done the etching of the leaves were once more evident, but she couldn't do anything with the leaves until the bead was dry. So she laid it on the cloth to begin the slow process.

[Taylani]

Upon further reflection Taylani decides that she will do all the beads as a background and then the highlights a different color. She spreads the rag that was holding the first yellow bead out to make room for the others. She is not sure how long it would take the paint to dry enough for her to be able to paint over the accents but it was worth the hassle to see if it would work the way she imagined.

The next one that she picked up was the circles, one that she was rather fond of even though it was a bit busy for her. This one she chose to dip into the green paint. She leans over to submerge the bone bead fully, even though it meant her own fingers got coated as well. Then raising the bead back up, she allowed the drips of paint to plop down into the beaker. She was fascinated that the paint seemed to come off in a sheet, then cling to the bottom of the bead before dripping in a long drip down into the beaker. That in and of itself was beautiful, and for a moment Taylani wished that she had the skills to actually use the paint to paint scenes.

With a breath, she takes the small paint brush, wiping the yellows off the bristles before sliding it along the bead, moving even more excess paint. Scraping the left over off the brush back into the beaker she placed the now green bead onto the rag beside the yellow.

The beads themselves were large, far larger then any Taylani had worked with but she had not felt comfortable whittling the bone down. Perhaps with the next batch she would try. These would serve as accent pieces rather then as a fully beaded piece. Otherwise the person wearing them would have to be as large as the fabled Akalak of Riverfall to get away with wearing such a large piece.

Smiling she begins to systematically dip each carved bone into the paint, cleaning her fingers and brush between each one to avoid transference of color to each bead. Red, yellow, orange, blue, green, and purple all were used, though the purple looked to be too dark to be a background color. So she only used the purple once, however it was a plethora of color on the rag when she finished.

Humming to herself, she topped each beaker with a tight bit of leather and a tie, in hopes to preserve the paint to not waste it. Then she carefully transferred the beads to her and Fallan's sleeping area so that they could dry over night. On the morrow she would begin to paint the accents and then drill the tiny bore which sinew or thread could be woven. .

[Elysium]

Taylani

This grade will be given upon request, if and when the PC chooses to be unretired.

and so, the journey continues...