Beaded Flourish Thinlits Per Ubuhle Exhibit

Last week, I visited an exhibit at our local art museum.

The Ubuhle Women Beadwork Art exhibit was wonderful,

and brought up a lot of emotion.  The beautiful, beaded

works of art were created by women with few economic

opportunities, many of whom had HIV.   They worked together

to created panels that were sold to support these women.

It took months to create their lovely panels, and some of the

women died during the course of making their projects.

Later, Chinese imports undermined their efforts.

This inspired me to pull out some of my retired SU micro

beads and make a beaded project.  I used a

Berry Burst flower image from the Flourish Thinlits.

The Ubuhle women always attached their beads to

black fabric, reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts 

which many of them grew up wearing. I used the Color

Theory DSP pack and layered my beaded medallion on

to a Basic Gray card base, run through the Layered Leaves

Dynamic Textured Impressions Embossing Folder.

If you get a chance, check out the story of the Ubuhle

Beaded artwork here.