5th Bead Soup Blog Party

Wohoo!!!  Today is reveal day!!  Can't wait to see all of the eye candy today!  I was paired with Kristina Johansson, Maneki.  Kristina sent me a wonderful soup, but I have to say that this was my 3rd time participating in the Bead Soup Party and probably my most challenging.  Kristina sent me a silk rod, which was so lovely it had rich royal blue and burgundies.  It was lovely but I absolutely did not know what to do with it and since Kristina had sent me something so lovely, I knew that I had to do it justice, and I didn't want to leave it out of the design that I was going to make.  I contacted Kristina and asked if she had any examples of using the silk rod.  She so generously sent me an email with a bunch of links sharing what others had done, one of the ideas was something I had cooking up in my head, but I wanted to try and gain ideas from others but try and do something that was unique to me.  Deryn Mentock did two lovely necklaces with silk rods, and they inspired me so, and I have been struggling for weeks try to do something similar but, I couldn't come up with a unique enough idea without it looking like I was copying Deryn. 

Other things that hit me this week was a tragic passing of a friend and I almost thought that I wasn't going to complete my piece, my mind has been in the clouds this week and grief over took me yesterday.  I almost contacted Lori and was going to explain the situation, but I decided that in order to honor my wonderful friend I need to get back to work and I need to make this piece for her to help me heal.  So I am naming my piece in honor of my friend and her wonderful spirit.

RELEASE HER SOUL

I took apart the silk rod and cut it in half then wrapped it around the antique gold key, I then wrapped it with copper wire and added some of the seed beads in the blue/green color.  I love these seed beads they are somewhat iridescent, with gold foil on the inside.  I then wire wrapped a butterfly and flower that Kristina had sent to me, they are wrapped messy to signify that life can sometimes be messy.  I added a ceramic bead from Spirited Earth, some Czech glass beads, blue tiger eye and apple jasper, peacock fresh water pearls wire wrapped and added to copper chain.  The key says memory on it which I thought was appropriate.  I realize that I have combined antique gold and antique copper, but I really wanted to use the key so I just ran with it.

Kristina thank you so much for the wonderful soup you sent me, I loved the color palette and was truly challenged.   Thank you Lori for all your hard work and dedication to all of us in the beading world.  Your tireless work in trying to make everyone happy is very much appreciated.  I hope that you have just as much fun hopping as the rest of us.

You will find the list of all the participates at the end of this post.  Please stop by if you can and leave a comment, I know that everyone puts a great deal of time and energy into their soup!!

Thanks everyone for stopping by!!

Take care,
Penny