Jewelry Shop: Bead Soup

I'm very excited to share with you that the time is finally here to reveal what I did with my bead soup! In case your new to my blog...here's the back story :)

The Bead Soup Party has been hosted by Lori Anderson, and she's done a tremendous job! How does it work? Well we had 85 jewelry artists sign up (incredible!) and Lori organized us so we each had a partner. She took on more than one since we had some late entries. We then sent out partner some "Bead Soup." What was in that bead soup? A focal, some beads to compliment it, and a clasp. Then we each have sat down with our soup and created something lovely!

My partner was Suzann - and I love the beads she sent me!

Creating this necklace was a challenge. I had so many fun elements to work with, and I wanted it to have a some of "me" in the necklace too! I don't usually get to work with components like this because, well, I just don't have the bank for it :P

The beads sat on my design table for at least a week. I knew I wanted to combine the components using hand crafted wire links (which goes back to my beginnings as a jewelry artist) but I was still trying to decide the best way to combine everything.

Then I hit on the idea of using some beaded beads to add the finall "me" touch to the piece! I've been wanting to learn how to make beaded beads and I knew one of the simplest ways is to make a tiny peyote tube. So that's what I did! They were fairly challenging for me because it was a lot of SMALL work. I'm used to a piece growing bigger as I work on it!

I like how everything worked out. I like how the bumps on the lampwork beads are complimented by the "bumpiness" of my little beaded tubes. I'm actually toying with changing the design slightly now that I've seen it complete and with photos...but there was no time before the deadline today! LOL

Edit (2/11/10) The current pictures reflect the minor change I made. I changed the way the focal was attached so that it hangs more smoothly now. It originally hung from it's own "link" that had several beads on either side of the hook. But the hook wouldn't stay in place and tended to move around, so I removed that link and instead attached the two side links directly to the hook. That probably doesn't make sense to anyone other than my fellow jewelry makers :P But I'm happy with the change!