Putting the Pot on to Boil

Yayyyy! My Bead Soup arrived in the mail. I've been checking out Bead Soup Blog Party blogs and it's funny, the predominant color for this Soup seems to be blue. Darker, winter blues. My soup I sent to Mallory was my blue ceramic feather focal with some of my blue and brown alphabet beads  and some black glass beads and other natural material beads with brass findings and my brass clasp. Mallory did a great feature on me on her blog For the love of beads. Thanks Mallory. Happy beading.

Mallory sent me this gorgeous soup which was also lots of blues. Completely different beads. She sent me one of her beautiful lampwork hearts. She must have done some snooping around and found that I heart hearts!! She also sent more lovely glass accent beads and a pretty silver colored toggle and a button!! I definitely want to work that button into my design. I don't use them often but I love the unexpectedness of buttons in jewelry.

I can't wait to get started designing my pieces. Per the Bead Soup Party rules I need to use the focal and the clasp I was sent. I can use them together or use them in separate pieces. I can use as many of the accent beads as I want and add anything from my stash to make my jewelry.  You can check out more Bead Soup on Flickr. This should be fun.

I Heart. I Don't Know Why...I Just Do

BOC Happy New Year Contest

At the BOC Blog they are having a contest. All you have to do is list two of your favorite jewelry making suppliers with a link and link it to your blog. One of my favorites is http://www.vintagejewelrysupplies.com/ . She always has free shipping and she carries lots of brass findings, stampings and chains. I love brass and copper. She also has lots of copper and other metal findings too. I just gave myself a Christmas present and ordered from her in December. I love the big jump rings and the chains that I can't find at my local craft store. And love her prices.

My other favorite online supplier is http://www.bisquebeadsupply.com/. I can get bisqued beads and also kiln furniture for firing my ceramic pieces.

January Art Bead Scene Challenge

Look at this incredible inspiration piece for the January Art Bead Scene Challenge It's called Brown River. I love the colors. And I actually already had a piece that I had just made that fit this inspiration piece perfectly. My necklace was actually inspired by the paper Bead for Life bead, it's the striped one, which was a gift. The colors in it are yellow, purple and brown. I even had the brown silk ribbon in the piece that to me so resembles the Brown River in the painting.

So since I'm already done with this challenge, I'm going to join Jen Judd's photography challenge on her blog which is also related to this piece of art. Sounds like fun!!

To my late husband in this new year

Dear sweet friend. I cherish the moment I learned of your existence!


Love from me to you!

( I totally stole this comment from another blog)

Earth Mother

I don't often name my jewelry. But every once in a while one of the pieces just says, "Hello, my name is .......". I was working on this piece after being inspired by some beads I received from Star Girl Jewelry in a Holiday Bead Swap. I had the little two sided clay face charm that I had made for a challenge piece I did a while back. I removed the charm from that necklace because I actually liked that piece better without the charm. But I digress. This necklace is for a very special person who happens to have a special birthday coming up. She has two precious boys so the two little faces were perfect. Thus the "Mother" part of the name. 

When I put the charm on the copper chain, it looked lonely. As I said, I had received some copper hammered leaves and beads and that fabulous orange glass ring in the bead swap. I rarely work with orange so I love these swaps for that reason. It encourages me to work with materials and colors I wouldn't normally work with. Anyway, when I added the circle I first thought of the sun, but then when I added my orange clay bead on the other side, it became the sun and the the ring became the earth with the copper leaf. And that's when she spoke and said, "I am Earth Mother". The colors are earthy and warm, just like the recipient of this piece.

Thanks, Marianna Boylan of Star Girl Jewelry for the inspiration and to Lori Anderson for organizing the swap. I'll let you know how she likes it.