Alice in Wonderland Focal for Beads of Courage

One of my recent requests through Beads of Courage, was for an Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton-ish movie type bead.  We make these special requests for children with cancer and other life threatening illnesses. When I saw this one, I decided it was my turn to interpret it.  I wanted her hair to be a similar color and the dress blue like in the movie.  She is larger than the bead, to show when she grew tall from eating the pills. (ah, if life only worked that way, I'd be taller instead of rounder.)

And of course on the back side, I added the rabbit wearing his blue jacket and of course he's late.  An Alice bead needs at least one of the colorful inhabitants of Wonderland!

I hope the little girl and her family enjoyed receiving this bead.  So seldom do we hear about their reaction.  But next week, I'll do a blog post about my chance to work directly with one of the Beads of Courage kids and make her special Dream Bead while she watched and took photos.  I think that experience meant equally a lot to both of us.

See you tomorrow- yes, on a Saturday!- for the Big Bead Soup Blog Party reveal.  Wait til you see what I made!

Finding Wonderland- It's Hard!

Our Fire Divas group of lampworkers is making beads for Bead & Button's auction to benefit Breast Cancer. An Alice in Wonderland theme was chosen, which in one way is exciting, but in other ways, is quite a challenge.
(and let's be honest, Tim Burton's upcoming movie and of course Johnny Depp were mentioned too.)

Originally, I had signed up to make Alice, but it seemed like everyone was having a tough time with the Cheshire Cat, so I decided to throw my hat into the ring to try him too.

Some of the challenges- not to make him look exactly Disney, but still the viewer know who it is, finding a good bright pink and one of the hardest challenges for me, making all those darn stripes. Geesh, that isn't technically hard, but time consuming and so easy to mess up.

Sure, his little round body was easy to stripe. Just go around in circles. But two arms and legs and a tail take a lot more time. I was busy stacking dots for a looooong time in order to form the stripes. This was my first try. I know that when I make another Cheshire Cat, I'll be making him a little differently and in a different pose. I have visions of a complete set to sell at the Gathering.

What's important is that he looks pretty good with the rest of the beads in the Fire Divas' set and perhaps a bead store or individual will fall in love with all of them and scoop them up while benefiting the non-profit.

I also sculpted and donated a White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, which I'll show you another time.

Have you tried making stripes? Did you use a different method to create them? And which Alice in Wonderland Character is your favorite?