Bead Soup Blog Party 2013 - drumroll please....

This was my first time involved in the BSBP and how much fun I had. There are over 541 people participating! Thank you Lori Anderson for putting this together, I am so glad I stumbled upon your blog!

I was paired up with a fabulous artist, Jennifer Davies-Reazor. She makes beautiful ceramic pieces inspired by myth and ritual. She is also inspired by found objects which, to me was a perfect person to be paired up with! I couldn't be happier with my final pieces.

I was challenged by the soups she sent me, mainly because I have never used ceramics in my work, but some of the pieces were very tribal looking to me, which is right up my alley!

If you recall Jennifer sent me 2 beautiful "soups" in 2 separate pouches. The Brown Pouch, as I referred to it was easier for me to work with:

The very first piece I made immediately was a bracelet using the Jen's stoneware bracelet bar:

I have been on a roll etching metals and had a hunk of etched copper just waiting to be used. I cut a piece of that and used micro fastneners to attach it to the leather. I added chain and attached some of the pearls and vintage buttons as dangles. I used some crystals from my stash with the buttons to add just a tiny bit of bling.  I love the clasp she sent me from the other soup, I thought it went perfect with the colors and feel of the piece. I had to use a couple pieces of turquoise, well, because I love turquoise and wanted that little bit of color in the clasp to be picked up.

Right away, the discs by Marsha Neal Studio called out to me, they are just fabulous! I fused some copper wire (that my husband stripped for me while working on our kitchen electrical), pounded it out and textured with my hammer. I disc cut 2 circles from the same piece of copper I used for the bracelet and voila, matching earrings.

And last but not least in this group is the necklace:

The copper medallion by Andrew Thronton arrived to me shiny. I had to oxidize it right away and it really brought out the texture of stars. I thought it would be perfect to pair it with the crystal Jen sent me. I also used a couple of the brown pearls and a brown bead she sent me along with some of my own stash of turquoise and vintage beads from broken necklaces my Gram gave me long ago. I was struggling with the perfect chain for this and found in one of my bins some copper links I made into bracelets. I took 2 of the bracelets apart and used it for the chain on this piece. I am planning on putting together the perfect outfit to wear this set tonight to a function I am attending!

Now, for my challenging soup

The focal was the biggest challenge to me. I stared at it numerous times before coming up with an idea. 

I still have a lot of pieces from this soup to use and mainly strung a colorful array of beads, pearls, crystals and spacers from my stash to pick up all of the colors in the Believe pendant.

Again, I steered toward a tribal/talisman look, that's just my thing. 

I hope I made Jennifer proud! Again, I had so much fun doing this and cannot wait to find the time to visit the blogs of all the participants - the full list of links can be found here.