Embroidered rizo flowers

I just had to share these little florals I did last night (an by night, I mean really night -- as in after midnight). It's an idea I've had for some time, probably since before I got these beads from Fru Pärla, but having prioritized other projects it wasn't until last night I acutally sat down and tried that little design idea of mine.

When I finished, I just had to share the result so I got the camera out today and took some quick snapshots. (A bit too quick in some cases -- sorry about the blurry quality in the top photo, but it was the best one I had...)

 

I'm rather pleased with how the different flowers turned out. Ok, using partially green beads on a green foundation wasn't that clever and emerald capri gold's not the most petal-like colour, but I just grabbed what I had closest to me -- and you can still see the flowers. It's not like they disappeared into the felt or anything. But try to imagine them in a solid, floral colour as they might look even better if I tried doing them in, say, purple or pink instead of "half green".

For the medium flower, I'm thinking of making a version with green beads in the outer circles, making it a flower with sepals or leaves around the petals.

That slightly wonky rizon on the left side of the small flower in the above photo is annoying: why didn't I see that before taking the photo? Anyway, if using it in jewellery, it's probably best to add a ring of seeds around the flower so the rizos are completely fixed in an upright position. They usually are, but can be flattened if the flower pushes against something, it snags on a loose thread or you put something on it. Not a probably if it's used in a wall hanging etc, but can be an issue in jewellery.

That's just a problem with the small flower, with the larger ones, the subsequent rows of beads keep each rizo in a fixed position.

By the way, this is a simple little design that'd I could whip up a how-to for pretty easily so if you want to see one here on the blog (and on my other blog), just let me know. ;-)