The Big Day Has Finally Arrived!
Tomorrow is the reveal for the Bead Soup Blog Party and I just finished my necklace. Yay! The reveal was postponed a week, which worked in my favor as I've been mega busy over the last month. I'm happy because my piece is complete and I like the final result. I hope you like it too.
Here is another shot of the bead soup received from my partner, Debra Gibson. This was our first time to participate in the bead soup blog party, so we weren't much help to one another. That's OK; our wonderful hostess Lori Anderson took such good care of us all that it was a breeze.
Debra provided a really cool focal; a vintage photo of a pleasant-faced woman encased in resin, in a soldered bezel. I backed it with a faux cut steel piece and added sari silk. I used a rhinestone button, a chandelier crystal, and a couple of beads as dangles. I also used light teal cut glass beads from my soup mix, and the copper clasp. The oxidized copper and silver plumber's solder play together nicely.
To those soup ingredients I added vintage, coppery faux pearls, two lovely old ceramic beads, and a couple of German, yellow givre' beads, which I had obtained through a terrific, closed destash group called Patti's Destash Divas. I made a wire and sari silk bead, used faceted Amazonite, and at the last minute added a copper button from my Mom's button box. My Mom's birthday would have been May 5th and I wanted to include something to remind me of her.
This is by far the longest necklace I've ever made at over 30 inches plus an extender. The length contributes to the rustic elegance of the necklace, in my opinion.
Debra also sent, as extra goodies, some Very nice polymer clay beads she made. I'm looking forward to using them on something soon. I wish I'd had time to work with them for the blog party, but it was not to be. Actually, I wish I'd used all of the soup ingredients Debra generously sent me. Luckily, I get to in the future.
I'm happy to have been able to participate in the 8th Bead Soup Blog Party. I taught myself how to wire wrap cup chain, got encouragement from Facebook friends, used a new (to me) color combination, and had a blast with the project. Lori Anderson rocks.
Below are the links to Debra's blog, Lori Anderson's blog, and a place to start the blog hop. Sit back, relax, and enjoy some eye candy as you hop the blogs of many talented jewelry designers! Lori deserves praise because not only did she do a great job organizing, pairing, encouraging, inspiring, controlling, and otherwise handling 500+ blog hoppers around a large part of the world, she paired up with two other blog party participants (the rest of us had one partner each), and did it all under extraordinary circumstances at her own personal expense. My prayers and admiration go out to her. If you enjoy the blog hop, which I'm sure you will, please let Lori know by commenting on her blog. The woman is a wonder.
