Bead Soup Blog Party # 8 - the day is here!

Welcome to yet another Bead Soup Blog Party! #8 to be exact :)

BSBP is one of the few blogosphere events I try to participate every they are hosted. Lori Anderson of Pretty Things is a lovely artist who takes on this herculean task of hosting the parties, now once a year. They are humongous parties, I forgot the number of participants this year, but it's somewhere close to 500. Trust me, that's a lot of work to organize! So a big Thank You! from the start to Lori.

My partner this time is Penny Neville of Copper Penny Designs, from Alberta - a fellow Canadian. Not only that, she sent me mostly Canadian art beads, and it was a true pleasure to work with her 'soup' ingredients.

I'll keep it short -this is my original soup, for more details on it please check a previous post, right here.

A lovely colour mix and a gorgeous bead mix all together. I have been stumped for a little bit, I am always stumped by lucite, and how to showcase them the right way. At first I wanted to incorporate everything in one piece. But the piece itself had a mind of its own and took a different approach :)

I started from metal: using copper washers, soldered them together, textured them, soldered them again (nothing like a good hammering to find out if your piece is holding itself together!), buffed, shined, and flame coloured the base.

Hubby saw it and said "It's perfect like this"... hmm... but I still have stuff to add, now what?!

After a few days of keeping it on my desk and watching it carefully, I started to add more elements. Not too many, though, I didn't want to cover it anymore :) I am silly, I know.

I used the pearls for the flowers 'stamina' and 2 of the polymer clay beauties to connect the focal.

A new question presented itself: how to hang all this? As I am allergic to base metals, for me it's out of question to use copper or anything else other than silver or gold on the skin. That's why my neck-pieces are either thread-based, or fabric covered. As luck will have it, I found the perfect element: a piece of velvet from a costume I wore when I was very young!

Perfect colour match, isn't it?! And a lovely childhood memory at the same time. Can you spell perfection?

I decided to name it 'Childhood memories garden' and I'm very happy with it :)

But that was only the focal! I still needed to use the clasp. Oh, my. Originally, I knotted the round and faceted beads on the Irish wax linen, thinking that will be my neck piece. But it didn't match the main piece anymore... and it was too short to use it as a necklace... so it became:

A wrap bracelet! My first one - and I do love wrap bracelets to pieces. So much so that since I decided it stays a bracelet I've wore it every single day. Love it!

The upside? If I find another toggle identical to this, I can transform it into a necklace - I'll show you when I'm done :)

This is my (short version of the) story and I'm definitely sticking to it :) More details can be seen in the slideshow below - enjoy!



First and foremost: thank you to Lori for organizing this wonderful event! I learn a lot, and I have tons of fun :)

Thank you to my lovely partner - I still have lots of ingredients to work with, and some ideas of earrings and bracelets to complete the 2 pieces done so far. Thank you, Penny, it has been a wonderful experience, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you created too :)

And last, but not least, thank you to all who visit and leave a note. I am honoured to have you stop by!

For a complete list of participants, please check Lori's post: Bead Soup Blog Party #8 - Participants list