Bead Soup Blog Party Now Going On!

This will be a fairly long post as the bead soup my partner Emanda sent me was a really lovely sampling of lots of beads and I made several things with them.

This wing which Emanda sells in her Etsy store in any color you choose was a trade for something I had that she wanted.  I chose my favorite colors of purple, royal blue and turquoise.  I thought I was going to use those dark blue aurora faceted beads with it........but plans change.

When you get to browsing through a bead stash you find all kinds of things that go together and I had gotten these iridescent big beads a few months ago with no idea what I would use them for until now.  They are perfect.

Those twisted bugle beads I had bought just before the bead soup started because I loved the greenish and aqua color combination in them, I think they work perfectly with the feathery wing.  And this piece looks like it was made to go with a new blouse I just bought!

So what did I do with the faceted aurora beads?  Glad you asked.

I strung them up on 3 strands with some moonstone colored lamp glass beads and some iridescent pale purple seed beads and made a bracelet.  I've only made one bracelet before and I've never done multiple strands before so this was a bit of an experiment for me.  I call this one 'Midnight & Moonstone'.

Here's the main project from the soup 'Butterfly Dreams'.  I found that some vintage beads I had worked nicely with the green/brown large beads from the soup.  They are a little dark in the photo but they are the same green background with a floral pattern.  This design took me a while and went through about 5 changes until I liked it.  I added a fancy bail to the focal to tie it in with the butterfly wing beads.

I really like how the large round beads mimic the pattern of a butterfly's wing and the pale blue/green glass beads match the focal so well.  My vintage tubes looked odd by themselves but I remembered I had a few bead caps stashed.  They were copper and didn't work but I got out some silver rub & buff and changed their color to match.  I had never used bead caps much but it really finishes off those tubes.

I had left over beads so I made some earrings to match.

The little cloisonne beads were crying out for some special treatment so here they are as earrings.  I did have some gold caps but I only had silver ear-wires, so silver caps it is.  I may wear them for Christmas as they look so festive!

This is 'Heart's Progression' and is a really soulful piece to me.  The focal is one of my glass pendants I make and sell in my Etsy store and has similar images on each side, one of the wise virgins from the story in the bible.  The beaded chains are some I picked up on sale because I liked the colors and the glass hearts Emanda sent were just the right accompaniment.  I used a simple heart toggle on this to keep with the theme.

Again I tried something new by using 2 beaded strands instead of just a simple single strand and I quite like it.

  Finally we come to the flat turquoise cross focal.  I had thought I would do a bead embroidered cuff bracelet but realized I would not have the time for it since I do work full time.  But my stash to the rescue!  I had these turquoise disks that I picked up at Walmart of all places and the color was a match.  I don't think these are actual turquoise, but rather another stone with similar colorations.  Never mind that, I love them anyway.  This one was a challenge as I decided to hand-knot the beads on silk cord.  I used 3 strands of brown silk as it was a bit thin and after 3 false starts finally got going.

First I didn't make my silk strands long enough, I saw the knots were eating up a lot of length.  Then I had trouble getting the knots close enough to the beads.  Finally I got the hang of it and the last time round it took about 3-4 hours to get it totally knotted.

I'm pretty happy with it and it will go with about half my wardrobe so it's a win win.

That leaves me with the left overs...there's another stray pale green one somewhere that the cat has been playing with, but these are what's left.  I just ran out of time to come up with anything else though I love the warm colors of the pearls and the oval beads that look like butterscotch.  Maybe I can come up with something after my vacation when I'm more rested.

So there's my bead soup all cooked up, hope you enjoyed it, I know I did!

Please visit my partner Emanda and see what she created.  And if you want even more then please see the list on Lori's Page where there are 360 more bloggers that participated!  

Thanks so much Lori, for all your hard work!