6th Bead Soup Blog Party Reveal

I will warn you busy folks who want to look at pictures and not read the blog that mine is long.... for personal reasons.....   If you want to scroll down and just look at my pictures feel free to do that.  I don't mind at all.  Please do stay if you can and leave comments.


I signed up for the 6th Bead Soup Blog Party because I have been following each one with great interest and it seems 399 other artists felt the same way.  This has become one of the most popular blog hops world wide all because of one kind hearted blogger, author and talented jewelry designer who goes above and beyond to organize it - the wonderful Lori Anderson.  Many thanks for the countless hours of hard work Lori - we love you!  You make this fun, interesting, a learning experience, great way to meet new artists, challenging and of course a huge party.


 My Bead Soup partner was Terry Matuszyk  of Pink Chapeau who for many years collected beautiful vintage jewelry to sell at antique shows and flea markets as well as online.  She transitioned into making her own jewelry which she now sells on Etsy.  Her jewelry is a classy mix of elegant vintage glitz to shiny modern brass with accents of resin and mixed media.


She sent a glorious mix of brass and vintage beads many of which I had never used before.  These pictures show beautiful shades of blue and green beads  which were carefully tagged as to what they were and where they came from.  I was able to use every type of bead sent except the vintage embedded lucite cabs simply because I do not have my stash of seed beads with me at the moment.  Isn't this a gorgeous Soup mix?

Notice the beautiful jewelry box that Terry included as well.  I certainly had no complaints about all the green beads as it is my favorite color.  But the color of that Sari silk - Wow!  I say Wow!  She has a good eye for color and I had no problem wondering which beads would go with what. 

Sari silk - B'sue Boutiques

Brass pieces - B'sue Boutiques

Vintage embedded Lucite cabs - B'sue Boutiques

Vintage Cobalt beads - A Grain of Sand

Blue glass teardrops - Fire Mountain Gems

Vintage metal Beads - A Grain of Sand

Green Aventurine - Fire Mountain Gems

Rough Cut tumbled Jasper - Fire Mountain Gems

Vintage focals purchased in an auction lot: 1950 Japanese ceramic bead,

vintage semiprecious blue gogo, vintage millefiori gogo

First and foremost a BSBP is supposed to be a challenge!  That is why we sign up - to stretch our jewelry making and artistic abilities and to learn new things from what our Bead partner sends.  

I am in the process of moving - still not moved - and my plan was to return to Alberta, pick up my package from the post office, visit with family for 2 weeks then return to BC and get to work on my bead soup creation.   It didn't work out that way - thus another challenge.  I had some beads here and there but my stash was limited.  Thank goodness my partner sent a great assortment of beads.  

 Sometimes when things are going well, life has other plans.  On July 12th we were given our biggest challenge - the hardest one yet.  My daughter's boyfriend was killed and we have been trying to help her through this tragedy. You can read about that on my previous blog which I posted to help heal a bit. 

 I do not want to dwell on that today as this day is all about BEADS.  I do want to say that Lori very kindly offered to let me postpone my reveal date but I'm glad I told her No, I need to do this for me.  This has been therapeutic for me and I'm glad I did it. 
YAY - I did it!  It was a lot of fun too!
So here are my pictures:

I fell in love with a 1950 Japanese ceramic focal bead in green and blue so wire wrapped two lovely olive lampwork beads and a czech glass bead from my stash.  I wanted to use the vintage semiprecious blue gogo as my front clasp and felt that the tiny green seed beads were a perfect contrast.  I wired them to attach the Gogo.   For the toggle bar, I decided to break up the brass leaf clasp set - I like breaking rules!  I used a section of brass ox chain from my soup and  olive sari silk that I had on hand.  To finish off, I tied little czech glass briolette bundles onto brass rings.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this bracelet and it came together easily.  I used three green Aventurine with silver spacers and a large vintage metal bead as a focal from my soup with topaz and palace green czech glass.   I never like to be too matchy so added three Afghan Green Jade on the other side to add a different shade of green.  I added green chain that was in the soup and used the silver clasp with tiny green crystals.  I had to use waxed linen for stringing as that is all I had.  I added a rhinestone and czech glass dangle.  

The leaf pendant is the other half of the brass clasp and it seemed like it wanted to be a pendant not a clasp.  Luckily I had a lucite olive green leaf which looked nice once I got it placed at the right angle.  I wire wrapped rough tumbled jasper (I love those) and some sweet little jade pillows that I had - except now I think they are too smooth and the color doesn't like to show up in a picture.  I added a green enamel connector and some chain and dangles I had.  The rest is from my soup:  individual brass connectors top left, brass leaves with tiny green glass pearls.  This necklace gave me the most problems to make but I stuck with it.  

Millefiori and the Wow Sari 

I love holding this vintage millefiori up to the light and catching the beautiful turquoise teal blue and green colors.  I decided a simple strung necklace would show off this focal so strung transparent teal seed beads into a shepherd's knot and  picked out teal and green czech beads, blue tear drops and a few from my own stash.  I finished it off with that Wow Sari silk - don't you think it's Wow Sari too?  The colors make me happy.

This bracelet took me literally about half an hour to make.  I was saving those gorgeous vintage cobalt beads and brass bead caps to go with the vintage metal beads in a bracelet.  I didn't want to overpower it with too many as they are rather on the heavy side.  I grabbed the filigree and layered it, added a cobalt czech glass bead and made a flower wire coil and some dangles.  I tried it on hoping it wouldn't be off balance and it fit perfect and didn't slide around - Score!

I even made a pair of ear rings using the same gorgeous cobalt vintage beads - added my own ear wires, dangly parts etc.  Haven't been making many ear rings.  Maybe I will now.  If you care to leave comments, I promise to answer each one.  I love comments!

So enough about me - now go visit all the other talented Blog Hop designers