Seahorse

So I decided the other day that my little bag needed a seahorse to ride along. I never really looked close at one before so spent the day perusing pictures and doing some premilinary sketches trying to come up with one I liked. This was the finished product:

Which I then scaled down and cut this tiny template from. I wanted to use a piece of iridescent blue/bronze taffeta for the body but I knew that would be a problem. The fraying on this fabric is legendary. Since this bag is definitely one that wont be washable I decided to seal the edges. Now I dont have any fancy bottles of fray check or anything else laying around here. Fray check tends to spread easily anyway so probably a good thing. I am poor and my supplies are few so I picked my clear glass paint..which is basically a watery white glue. I lay the template on top of my fabric and with a small brush I painted around the edges, then I let it dry to tacky (only a few minutes) and cut around the edges leaving about a 16th of an inch of the glue. This worked perfectly except that the paper wanted to stick in several places so I spent a good 15 minutes picking bits of paper off of it. I then carefully did a tiny chain stitch around the edge with a pale blue kreinik blending filament.


So far so good. I liked this. SO yesterday I spent the day adding my details to his body. I went back around the entire body with a nice silk floss in ocean blue, added the detials inside the body and embellished it with beads. I have one small problem though. I'm not sure I like the cobalt beads that run down the center of his body. They seem to dark and harsh for such a delicate piece. What's your opinion?