This is an awesome pattern. It's another one from a bit of clip-art, although for the amount of cleaning I had to do to that one, I feel no guilt in listing it for sale.
The black one I made back in college. It actually has the same background pattern as the cream one, but you can't tell because I used clear dark green beads and black thread. It has two shades of red that you can just barely tell apart, although it looks better than usual in this image, and then of course I used that tarnishing silver for his claws, ect. To look at he's not much--unless the light hits it at an oblique angle, and then all the colors glow and pop out of the tapestry and it's beautiful--or it used to be before the silver tarnished.
Anyway, I took the lessons I'd learned in color from the first one and applied them to the second, cream-colored one. I meant to do more with adjusting the background, and they actually are quite different, but in the end that's almost the only thing that disappoints me about the second dragon.
I did say *almost,* yes. I also ran out of the lesser background color, which wasn't entirely unexpected, but was frustrating because I couldn't find any beads that color anywhere--though I swore I'd seen them pretty recently. I even went to the bead stores on the far side of town, but--nothing. They didn't even sell seed beads, actually. But that's a different tale.
So i went online, and got something that I thought would be perfect, but it's a little off. Not enough to bother me, though. But I also got more thread in that time, and the new thread was a bit thicker than the old thread (though it shouldn't have been), so there's a slight increase in the width of the tapestry towards the top. Not a bit deal, but I have some perfectionist tendencies--and then I found that I had more of the first thread that I could have used... figures.
Anyway, if you'd like to experience the joy and wonder of making your own Asian Dragon Beaded Tapestry, then I've listed the pattern on Etsy so you can try your hand at making the colors match and not making the sides wobble. I dare you.
Those dragons are awsome! Very pretty!
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