The night sky was my inspiration for this piece.  Living far away from city lights, I am often treated to spectacular displays of shooting stars, a milky way, alignment of planets sightings, and of course, northern lights.  I am positive I have also seen a few UFO's but that is a topic for another time. 

When I do my bead embroidered pieces they are not planned, I let the beads tell me where they want to reside as I go along.  In this instance, I knew I wanted to do a rendering of a galaxy, but that was all.  Metallic Iris lined clear size 11 seed beads picked up one at a time and sewn two at a time were used along with vintage rhinestones, a mirror, freshwater pearls, various other glass beads and a copper enamel planet made by Duluth Mn artist Sarah Lukkonen compose the beaded portion of the bracelet.  I sewed them onto a sturdy backing, which took many days.  I then glued the embroidery to a brass cuff blank, and lined the inside of the bracelet with soft ultrasuede.  This is all very time consuming, as I have over 50 hours into this piece.  I was humbled when it was brought to my attention that this bracelet reminds many of Van Gough's The Starry Night, which until after I had made this piece, I had never seen before. 

This was my first ever bead embroidery and I became forever hooked on the process.