Bead soup arrived!

Not mine that is, not yet, and holiday Monday will mean Tuesday at the earliest.  However, it’s always a bit of a sigh of relief when you know a package has reached an eager recipient safe and sound.  Now I get to share with you the soup I sent to Cindy without all the stirring.



It took me some time to decide where to start.  For me the starting is always the hardest part.  Blank canvas type of issues – if you can use any and every colour which one do you start with?  Let me tell you for this soup it was my daughter handing me a fistful of crayons: “hereya go mama”.  She didn’t even look up from her own drawing.  You see I just tape down a bit sheet (from one of those rolls meant for an easel) on the table and the crayons are just always spread across it.  I took the five crayons in my hand and thought, huh, not a bad palette you’ve got here.  I lined them up on the paper and took a mental note of the names.  Later, once she was out of sight, I ripped off the top portion of the page.



So the Crayola crap shoot offered up : Scarlet, Timber wolf, Salmon, Tumbleweed and Mahogany at the top of the picture above.  You can see the mess of colour the next handful brought to the left.  Anyways, looking at the grey and brown together I was reminded of some very fun chrysanthemum stone that I had tucked away.  Once I had those stones in my hands I headed towards the worktable.  I started mixing a cool grey and didn’t even get the whole way there before I decided I liked the striations coming about and that I should really make some more rocks to go with my rocks!  Witness the two rivals above, with the chrysanthemum stone in front and the simple in design, but nicely made sterling clasp.

I should have caught a better picture of the edges on these, rather than have then smooth like pebbles I went for a facetted flint like edge.  Below you can see a third rival focal made it into the mix.  each of these is reversible.  I created a small handheld stamp with that bursting pattern, a spin off of the chrysanthemum stone. 



Here’s the picture with the chrysanthemum stone that actually has the scarlet right there in the stone (the one at about 9 o’clock), across the bottom is a fire agate.  I find both these stones are pretty but I think I’ve never designed with them myself since their shapes make me go hmmm.  I hope I haven’t been too tricky here.



So these were the principle ingredients and them it was off to the pantry and worktable to round out the perfect bead soup.  Let me tell you how much fun it is to stand in front of my dear cabinet picking out beads… bead soupers, kindly do not pelt me with beads over my extra special twenty drawer (no it’s no where near full) printer’s chase.



Here is the final round up that went out to Cindy to pick and choose and hopefully enjoy working with. The back dish is just as I showed above, but with a couple polymer beads I found going through my drawers.  Moving clockwise we have two shell rings (a bit of a darker grey), strawberry fresh water pearls, dyed jade rondelles, padparadascha swarovski crystal, and some puffed polymer beads.  Then down in front are a variety of roundabout polymer beads.  Some of them started out with a lot more of the pink but the ink in those totally faded in the oven, most curious.  Then a little of horn rings to be the “tumbleweed” and the variety of ebony wood beads were as close as I came to the Mahogany.  There you have it!

Joining in on the Bead Fest Pity Party

I’m RSVPing to Heather Power’s Bead Fest Pity Party!

Now this party is full of all sorts of wonderful guests offering awesome deals you should know about.

Since I can’t be attending Bead Fest myself, nor am I sending my personal shopper like a little while ago, I’ll just have to make do with my own bead stash.  It’s pretty modest really but it is housed by the most beautiful Hamilton chase.  It was no beauty when I got it.  I’d show you the before pictures if they hadn’t been eaten by our last desktop, but imagine a whole lot of grime and assorted yuck.  Before I go further, I should really give proper credit as it was my husband who found it in the local used ads online and convinced the seller to give us an awesome price as he wanted to surprise me with it for our anniversary.  It wasn’t our anniversary, but it was one of the best gifts ever!

So back to the yuck, I wanted it gone.  Antiquers look away – I stripped it!  There was no way I was ever going to part with this beauty and it really needed to go back to bare wood, be re-stained (a tad darker to go with our stuff) and then protected by three coats of poly.  It took me weeks in our garage, balancing all twenty drawers all over the place, but it turned out beautifully.



It is in the darkest corner of our basement so a flash photo is the best chance to show you.  I decided too to show you the truth with it covered with all the usual junk.  Before you get extra jealous let me tell you it’s no where near full, that will probably be a lifetime pursuit. But I will give you a few sneak peeks.



A quick look in part of the pearl drawer, and you may see a few bits of tape around.  When I’m really on top of supplies there is a per bead price on the little strip of tape per section.

I had this idea about showing you my storage, when no sooner than I had the thought, I saw Lorelei Eurto showing off her new beauty.  I hope hers is nice and clean!  Mine, the filth was really stubborn so I had to come up with a work around.  Below is a half lined drawer.  When I first started filling it I wanted to be sure I could see the colours accurately as it’s in a dark spot, so I wanted a white background.  While paper would have probably done the job I chose white craft foam (by the roll) instead for it’s extra cushion. There are 1920 compartments in this thing (96 per drawer) so I’m a long way from done, I just add as needed.



I’m being a bad party guest since I’m supposed to be “busting my stash”.  For the sake of the photo I moved around some vintage Humblebeads from their regular home to close to some gorgeous lampwork I had bought for myself and some Marsha Neal Studio pendants… I think there may be something in the making!



I adore these humblebeads! They used to be in a necklace but it wasn’t quite right for me so it returned to the drawer. It’s funny but it seems that because I work with polymer I have a hard time creating jewelry with polymer made by others.  I feel conflicted about making anything to coordinate and then I feel conflicted if I am wearing a necklace I’ve made, but not the polymer beads themselves… I do make things complicated for myself don’t I!