8th Bead Soup Blog Party - The Reveal!

Good day to you and welcome! I'm so happy to again be a part of the wonderful blog party created by the lovely Lori Anderson. My partner for this year's swap is the INCREDIBLY talented Kelly Hosford Patterson of The Traveling SideShow and PyxeeStyx on Etsy. Kelly is so talented with so many different types of media.

She showered me with love in creating my beautiful soup. I posted about her amazing soup here and Kelly blogged about it here. Now, I am not a prolific jewelry maker. I wrestle with my creativity in ways I can't even begin to explain. I am in such awe of folks who can sit down for a few hours and create many pieces of jewelry. I can't do it. Just. Can't. I labor over each and every piece and it takes me forever. Why, I don't know but it's a fact. Sigh. I've made several pieces from my beautiful soup (and miraculously, a couple of them came together fairly quickly). I've put several of the components Kelly sent to me away until fall. We've had such a long, hard winter and spring is just ever so slightly beginning to grace us with her presence (it feels like early April here). I plan to work with my beautiful felted wool beads and fiber wire as we head toward fall. I also have a piece in progress that you'll have to check back on May 24 to see as it's for the reveal of Diana Ptaszynski's (Suburban Girl Studio) waxed linen jewelry blog hop.

First up, Follow The Sun. This necklace features the faux sunflower druzy that Kelly created, along with her hand forged, bead wrapped clasp. I LOVE these 2 pieces. I also incorporated the dragon's vein agate egg, printed wood beads and the hammered copper chain segment Kelly made.

I took one of the large washers and wire-wrapped it with the cube crystals that Kelly sent along. I also added a vintage lucite link and some vintage lucite tube beads that I collected while working at The Beadin' Path. I also created some twisted copper wire jump rings and created small sections of chain to suspend the focal from.

I also included a little hand painted sunflower bead (on a Natural Touch resin bead) that I had created some time ago. I love that I could combine my sunflower with Kelly's. I absolutely love this necklace and I'm sure I'll wear it often.

Next up are earrings made with vintage lucite tear drop hoops and some of the crystals Kelly sent me along with copper balled end headpins that I made. Light weight and casual.

This next pair of earrings pairs the same crystals (I love the color) along with the vintage lampworked leaves. I tied on short lengths of red sari silk.

This bracelet is in progress, I need to figure out what I want to do for a clasp (copper or brass/bronze?). I've used one of the large printed wood beads, honey jade rondelles, carnelian rounds, and vintage luster glass.

My second necklace includes two different vintage copper chain lengths, Kelly's collage bee treasure box pendant, her hand forged sunflower link (which I altered by adding color with Alcohol Inks), a fringe of copper chain and beads along with a bee skep connector I made. I have a dear friend who keeps bees (mmmmm is the honey delicious!), he calls them his girls. I'll think of Kelly and Jimmy when I wear this!

My final creation isn't jewelry to wear, but is very close to my heart. I have a thing for ornaments (surprising given my blog name, eh). I've recently started collecting sunflower ornaments. This is the first I've created, using the other hammered sunflower Kelly created (which I altered by adding color with Alcohol Inks) along with the polymer crow by Beady Eyed Bunny.

This has been so much fun! I still have a number of pieces in progress on my desk (it actually looks much worse than this presently):

Thank so much for stopping by. Please visit Kelly's blog to see what she created with the soup I sent to her. You can also hop along to see what the other 500 artists created (this is going to take a while!). Thanks again Lori for creating such a fun event for us to meet new people, share and create! Here's the link to Lori's post with all of the participants listed: Participant List