Tackle that stash - Tears of the Jewel Dragon

Sometimes I'm surprised myself when checking for the age of things in my stash.
I still remember ordering two large dragon eyes very vividly because it was so hard to decide on the size and color. Back then I hadn't even given the faintest of interest to off loom beading or bead embroidery and didn't really know what to do with them, especially not with such big ones, but they looked so pretty I couldn't resist.
One of them ended up in a necklace for myself, the first of my very few split loom necklaces, quite early in my bead looming journey. I wouldn't do it like that anymore now, but the necklace has survived my regular "sessions of destruction" so far, instead it's hanging on my wall as a reminder of my first SLN experiment which I don't think I could repeat.
What really surprised me, though, when I looked it up in my purchase history was that I had bought the eyes on June 2, 2013 - the seller is still active, by the way, the price hasn't even gone up that much, but the postage sure has, no surprise there - and shared the finished necklace on my blog on June 28. That was pretty quick given the time the eyes would have taken to get to Germany from the US.

As you can tell, I was not so quick using the second eye which had to spent more than 11 1/2 years in my stash drawer!

For a Crafternoon - a virtual meeting with some blogger friends for chatting and crafting - I needed a project and spontaneously chose the dragon eye for bead embroidery.
To be on the safe side, I usually bead a bezel for my cabochons, so the start was easy.
Of course, I wasn't the only one to be reminded of Sauron's eye. The yellow is missing, but this wasn't the path I wanted to go down, anyway. Only what path it should be instead, was beyond me at the time.

For the next meeting two weeks later, I pulled it out again, bezel finished by now.
My favorite way to come up with an idea is to hold the cab up every, now and then and stare at it, sometimes over a few days, and then rummage through my stash drawers to see if anything is screaming at me - textures, shapes, but mostly colors first.
This time I came across my beloved hexagon beads and my first thought was "jewel dragon". Hex beads in a dark red, a silver-lined red and gold, and black AB for depth and contrast. Seed beads in similar colors for extra texture.
It would be so sparkly and shiny, not Sauron at all.

After I had filled about half of the space with beads, the piece screamed free form. I have no idea why bead embroidery is the one technique that makes me go free form the most. Maybe it depends on how I sew on the beads. If I let them flow into all directions without thinking about a pattern first, it seems to break up the strict boundaries of the cab's own shape and it feels wrong to restrict that flow by making it stay within the same shape as the cab. No rules, just vibes. Does that make sense or is that only in my head?
In that case I don't sew on the beads, cut the edges of the beading foundation, then put on the backing and cut around that edge.
Instead I start embroidering, eventually cut the foundation to a shape that speaks to me and then keep embroidering. Sometimes I even cut some more during the process if it feels right. No rules, just vibes.

It took me some days to get all the beads on, also because I couldn't resist holding the piece up to the light all the time to admire the sparkle which was even more beautiful than I had imagined. I wish I could capture that in the pictures.
With focals as big as this one, I usually prefer some kind of beaded rope, but after trying a few things, straps seemed to be working better in this case.

The necklace was finished, wasn't it? Ah, but those who have known me for a while also know that it's very hard for me to resist a dangle or a fringe, and an idea sneaked into my head.

Now the only question is why the Jewel Dragon is crying ...