Bead Embroidered Box

Inspired by a Japanese woodcut print of a moonlit night over water, I decided to embroider a landscape to grace the cover of an ash wood jewelry box. I liked the simple shapes and colors of the print and distilled them down to even more basic forms and then started embroidering! I did a simple painted outline on dark ultrasuede to give me guidance when beading. I like working on a dark ground - I find it less visually disturbing if a bit of it shows through as opposed to a very light or bright color showing through.

My primary technique was couching - here is a basic tutorial on that technique. I tend to run my thread through the line of beads again after couching as an extra precaution. I also used peyote stitch in the round (tubular peyote stitch) to bezel the moon. The moon is a vintage shell button, and I used size 11 delicas to create the bezel holding it in position. Here is a nice tutorial for that technique.  Most of the beads in the piece are either size 15 or size 11.

The ash wood box is commercially produced and has a recessed area on the cover perfect holding the embroidered piece. I backed the final embroidery with an extra layer of ultrasuede and then glued it in position using E6000 glue, which is the strongest glue I have ever personally encountered! If you want to try this reliable glue, try to work in a well ventilated area and be patient - although it dries quickly, it does take a few days for the artwork to stop smelling like the glue.

In progress - you can see my simple painted outline that I used to guide my stitching.

The final product!