Soup Arrival

I had only expected to find bills in my mail box when I checked it yesterday, but I was surprised to find a small box from Alberta there.

Once I was back upstairs I opened it to find a well packed trio of packages.

Each was carefully wrapped in red and white tissue.

The largest contained a great variety of ingredients including pearls, an assortment of copper findings and beads, beautiful handmade toggle and lampwork beads.

The smallest held a wise and colourful lampwork owl.

The third package was long and narrow, I was very curious as to what it held. Inside were handmade headpins.

Here is a final picture of the complete soup send to my by my amazing partner, Cheryl Brown of Dragonfly Designs.

Thanks Cheryl.

Stop back on April 6, reveal day, to see what I create with this amazing soup.

Peruvian Owl Necklace

I learned from Maria that these amazing Raku beads are from Peru and imported by J.P. Imported. I selected the three owls to make into a necklace.

These beads have a wild array of colours on them. I found some fire-polished that had similar colouring. I added some paper beads with copper bead accents.

A few strategically placed bicones hold the owls in alignment with the other beads.

Tucson Treasures

My friend and beading guru, Maria is back from teaching and exploring the multitude of amazing things at the shows in Tucson. I was very lucky to be given these very amazing beads.

Italian Cane Bead

A selection of Raku beads

More Raku Beads

And more Raku Beads

I am going to start with the three owl beads and create a necklace. I will be fun to create something with the sea creatures and dragons.

Thanks for the great beads Maria!

Bead Soup Blog Party #7 Partner

I am part of the 2nd reveal group for the 7th Bead Soup Blog Party. Today I got my email from our guru Lori telling the name of my partner.

I have been partnered with lampwork artist and potter, Cheryl from Grande Prairie, Alberta.

I just have to give my soup a few tweaks and with will be ready to ship west!

Come back for reveal day on April 6th!

ABC's of Creativity - January Review

Maria of Rypan Designs made it part of her start of the new year to get her newsletter out to her mailing list (you join the list using the form on the right). As I was helping her prepare the content of the newsletter we came up with the idea of having a bi-weekly posting on her blog about creativity. We call it the ABC's of Creativity.

I offered to help with the creation of the blog posts. So far I have done A is Art and B is Beads.

A is Art includes links to online galleries for inspiration as well as my favourite art to jewellry creative path.

Starry Night by Van Gogh

Hand made beads by Heather Power inspired by painting

Finished necklace by Jo-Ann

B is Beads has a variety of beads from ancient shell beads to lampwork and beaded beads.

Photograph Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d'Errico (from nationalgeographic.com)

Lampwork beads by Amy Waldman-Smith

Belissimo Beaded Beads, designed by Marcia DeCoster

Only 24 more letters to go.... I will review each month's letters here at the end of the month.

Happy Beading!

Bead Soup Blog Party

Today is the first day to sign up for the 7th Bead Soup Blog Party. Our host & bead soup guru, Lori Anderson, has the form up on her blog.

I participated in the 6th Bead Soup Blog Party last summer. It was fun to swap beads and see what you could create the amazing beads sent by your partner. So if you have a blog, love beads and are up for the challenge... hop over to Lori's blog and sign up. I did and I know it will be another great challenge!

A couple of green boxes

After all the purple in my last post I have some boxes from the other side of the colour wheel.

Using patterns purchased from Julia Pretl's website I did the Olive box and the Fir Tree box.

For the olive box I was able to use the colours listed on the pattern, muted greens and red. I finished it with a khaki Swarovski crystal.

The fir tree box is a pattern that Julia posted about on Facebook just before Christmas. As I did not have the exact colours listed on the pattern I decided to do it using beads I already. I thought that I had enough of each of my selections. I had about 2/3 of it done when of course I ran out of one colour. This past weekend I was able to get to a bead store to get the needed beads. I eagerly started finishing it on Saturday night. By Sunday morning I was worried that I might not have enough of one other colour. I finished with just 4 beads left in the tube. I also decided to not add any decorative finishing to my tree. It looks fabulous as a natural tree.

 

 I have a few more of Julia's patterns from her website so look for them of the coming months.