Bead Soup REVEAL!!!!

First off, a shout out to my amazing husband, Mike, who is currently putting our kids to bed so that I can blog about this on our 11th anniversary! Seriously, I can't make this stuff up--Happy Anniversary, my love!
Now, down to business, I am s00000 excited to finally share! These are the beads I received from Pam Ferrari. So many fun items!!!

I have been super busy with my crazy life, so I only got 4 pieces made with the incredible soup I received. The cool thing, is some day, I will get a chance to have another cup of soup or two from these beautiful ingredients! I can't wait!!

I had so much fun with these colors. Here is a close-up of the first piece I made with one of Pam's gorgeous focals.
I took one of the headpins with a beautiful blue glass end and put it through the center hole of the focal, up through the back and wrapped it around the top. I attached a silver chain behind the glass ball on the headpin and the center of the focal. This was something I had never tried before and it took a few attempts to get it right. I was a bit nervous, because I did not want to waste a single beautiful headpin! After getting the focal how I wanted it, I knew I wanted to add several of the beads that Pam sent me in my soup. She sent such a variety, so I decided to make it an asymmetrical design. I added some Trinity Brass Company chain and findings to Pam's beautiful beads to finish out the design. This necklace took me quite a while to get the end result that I wanted. I really appreciate the opportunity to try new things, use components I hadn't worked with before and time to try and get it right! Knowing that Pam had spent so much time making each of these amazing glass pieces really added to the pressure! I really wanted to do her work justice--without overworking it and having her art get lost in the piece.


After completing the necklace, I was feeling excited, but a bit exhausted. So, I returned to my comfort zone, making a cute little ring that was more my typical style. I used a C-koop flower, filigree ring and two of the beads from the bead soup. I love this, and it was definitely more my style and comfort zone!


The third piece I made was this leather cuff bracelet, using a few filigree from my stash, a flower that I had patinaed awhile back with my girls, and one of the beautiful glass beads made by Pam. Again, more within my usual style, I really had fun with this one. After gaining back a bit of confidence, I finally felt ready to tackle the felted balls....



For the fourth piece, I used the felted balls and some beads and findings from my own stash, with a toggle from Pam and made this bracelet. The felt balls were too dense to poke wire all the way through, so I poked the wire through the surface and back out (similar to sewing), and then wrapped the wire with a bead. Turned out to be really fun to figure out how to use these balls! I hope you enjoyed my four servings of soup!

I can't wait to take a peek at all the other designer's ingredients and the soup they created! I hope you will, too! Please visit my partner, Pam Ferrari's blog and check out what she did with the soup ingredients I sent! I am dying to see what she came up with!!! Also, Lori Anderson is our fearless leader on this Bead Soup. Click on her name to be connected to the list to blog hop from!