Bead Soup spring 2013 prizes for Runner Up

Today I am catching up on my blog posts before this saturdays reveal of the Bead Hoarders blog hop. I definitely needed to get a picture of my winning beads posted from the spring hop first!
Thank you Lori and everyone who participated or voted in the Spring 2013 Bead Soup Blog Hop.

I was so excited to win runner up, it just added to the fun of the blog hop and was a great boost mentally. I think Lori sent these from her personal stash, how cool is that? And thoughtful as well :~)
There is some ceramic beads, two kinds actually. One of them came with my current favorite "bead of the moment", some transparent garnet colored fluted glass melon rounds. YUM. They are just above and to the right of the 4 squares of candy jade. There is also white cord, some awesome fringe beads and 4 of the sweetest little metal bird charms that I love. You can see all the beads she sent in the pic above. Click on it and it will enlarge.

Again, Thank you to Lori and everyone involved! See you back here, Saturday, for the Bead Hoarders Blog Hop reveal!

Winning is awesome!

A few months back I posted I won a bracelet from Deb from DeborahRead.com and said I would post a picture when it came. Well It has been a while and I apologize for the delay but when it came it didn't fit. It is beautiful and I do love it but with the surgery I am finding some small things impossible to do. One of them being getting a tight bracelet on my wrist :~)
 I contacted Deb, she was super nice! I am thinking she was way busy and didnt get a chance to get the additional piece in the mail for me. I am grateful for the prize.
So here is a picture of the bracelet.

See, i told you it was beautiful! She etched it with her own pattern that she drew and did the metal work.
If you would like to take a peek at what she does here is a link.
Deborah Read 
Have a great weekend everyone! I will be posting my Bead Hoarders Blog post on Saturday, come back and see.   God Bless.

Bead Hoarders Blog Hop

I have already started on some things for this blog hop. I am ahead of time, go figure, LOL!
I have a lot of dragonfly beads and I wanted to to see what I could come up with with some of those. I have had a love of dragonflies for years. My Aunt and Uncle have a little piece of heaven up in New Hampshire on a lake called Winona and when you swim/float quietly they (the dragonflies, not my Aunt and Uncle) will land right on you! Some huge ones like tiny helicopters and these amazing tiny pairs of the most awe inspiring bluish purple you will ever see floating in the afternoon sun. Sigh... wish I was there now. Wish I was there ALWAYS.
So the dragonfly necklace is done, the earrings are almost done and I am thinking on the bracelet. I had a LOT of dragonfly beads. Lets face it, I still do.
 But the really cool thing about this blog hop and subsequent projects? I used everything from my stash, right down to the crimp beads! I have been wanting to sit down and make some pieces with some of my "treasure" beads and this hop worked that right onto the top of my to do list!!! And depending on how long it takes my niece to get the measurements I need for her wedding jewelry I may have a chance to use more "treasures". I am very excited for July 20th now. I think this necklace is among my top 10 finished pieces.
All you beaders will understand what I mean by top 10 FINISHED pieces. Some of my favorite pieces are still in my head, waiting for the perfect beads and findings. Or even more exciting, waiting for me to learn how to create those beads and findings :~)

Until the 20th then! God bless.

Beauty, fragmented

* if you are looking for my BSBH reveal post scroll down :~)*
I am intrigued by the possibilities associated with all the new shapes of seed beads. I am a beadweaver.
I take tiny pieces of colored glass, needle and thread and I stitch them into pieces of artistry. (At least they are artistry to my eye, others may not agree) These new shapes, particularly the 2 holed ones, are a HUGE development to the beadweaver. The opportunity for design is staggering, inspirational and mind blowing. The only downside here is that my hand is not yet able to bead for hours. I can, at best, expect to bead for 15 minutes before I have to rest it. Hopefully that will improve by leaps and bounds, Lord willing.
So with that limitation in mind, I have been playing.
The first thing I did was find the cheapest way to own some of these amazing beads. I shopped in my home town, I found some twin beads and some super duos. Both in limited colors and finishes with the super duos being noticeably more expensive. I wondered why.
Next I turned to online, much better selection but still the prices were still high, super duos more so. I took a trip through online shops, ebay and such finally finding myself at ETSY. ( long story shortened for your reading pleasure) What I was looking for was a good balance between price and selection. I spent many days looking through different sellers and comparing prices and shipping, selection and colors.
I ended up choosing a few to buy from to compare shipping times and customer service. Nitty gritty I have 2 etsy shops I really love, one being in the states and run by a very nice, very accommodating woman named Tamara. Her shop is called Beads to Weave and can be found here https://www.etsy.com/shop/BeadsToWeave
And one in Prague, Czech republic.(One of the things that is absolutely awesome about the internet is that every one is only a click away. :~) The shopkeeper's name is Olga. She was equally nice and helpful.
Her shop is called ScarraBeads and is found here 
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScaraBeads

Bost shops are great, a little better prices from Scarrabeads but the shipping is higher (duh they come from the Czech republic!) and it takes about 8 days to arrive while Beads to Weave packages come so fast I think she has a transporter! I have no affiliation to these shops other than I have shopped with them and enjoyed the experience and the product.

After receiving the beads I looked online for others experimenting for a simple jump off point. Deborah Roberti has free tutorials and I started with these http://www.aroundthebeadingtable.com/Tutorials/Starburst.html 
This is my first version

I changed the daggers but that was pretty much all. Both the super duos (SD for rest of blog) and twins in this piece worked pretty much the same. The purples in the center are SD matte violet and the peachy ones are twins. In this piece the twins weren't too bad, all though they definitely seem to have a flat back to them. The SD were symmetrical and stacked together beautifully.

This one, in purple, 

is done the same way as above, except I used delicas for the 11's.

The center beads are twins and they are very irregular and different in both shape and sizes, hard to find 5 that were similar enough to use. The outer ones are SD, again, no troubles they are a joy to work with.

So I now made a matching set, using roughly, the Starburst pattern from Deborah.

Sorry I forgot to turn the pic. I put drop beads in the place of my daggers and her rizzo's. One of the spots I put the briolette shaped bead. I am very happy with these and now wanted to make a matching bracelet. The first problem I needed to overcome was there are 5 points and I needed an even number to be able to connect them side by side. Here are a few I tried based on 6 instead of 5.

Although I like these they are tending to ruffle and then the petals are hard to see. The top right piece has Rollos on 3 sides. It ruffles the most.

This is what I am playing with now.

Im not sure this shape will lead to a bracelet. I kind of off on a tangent  now but

I am having fun playing with these beads. I think the super duos are the ones I will stick with. The twin beads seem like they may be improving as the peach ones seemed better than the purple ones, or could the purple ones be a knock off?  Who knows?  This reminds me of a snowflake. 

So what is everyone else doing with these?  

Bead Soup spring 2013 REVEAL #3

Good morning Blog hoppers !  
 Welcome to my reveal for the spring 2013 Bead Soup.
First a thank you to my partner Christa Murphy for my wonderful, abundant soup. (I have posted many pictures of that soup if you care to scroll down and see them.) and to Lori, our organizer for all her hard work. I enjoyed working with my soup, it was challenging doing it mostly one handed. My wire work is not what it normally would be but Lord willing I will get there. 
Being a Christian I was immediately drawn to the faux turqoise crosses she sent, and they went beautifully with the fire agate. I added stampings, chain and and some fiber, simmered and spiced. Fiddled and worked and  Viola, my Soup!   Here is the entire set first.

I will show you the close ups before I show you the other piece. I am doing well but I can use my hand for only a few minutes at a time and limitedly so all the pieces I wanted to make are not done yet but they are planned out. Stop back next month and you can see the rest of the soup served. Lord willing :~)

The bracelet is what I started with, I wanted to use the stamping curved to my wrist and the beads in the back. here is what I ended up with.

I added the fibers to soften up the harshness of the metal and the chunkiness of the beads. I prefer simple pieces that rely on the beauty of good workmanship and beautiful materials. You can see that better in my second "set" of mixed up soup so these pieces are a bit of a stretch for me. I do like them and will enjoy wearing them but probable not as often as my simpler pieces. Now all I need is something to wear with these pieces. he he

The necklace was born quickly, taking its cues from the bracelet. Of course its actual assembly took awhile and I believe working on these pieces was good hand therapy. Minus the week I couldnt do much with the hand due to overuse. woops! 

The clasp, highlighted in green, I made with a vintage clip on earring part and one of the crosses. I did not add the red crystal to this cross because I didnt want it to catch easy and get popped out/off. The clasp for this necklace was confounding me for awhile and I went through some of my "odd stuff" containers ( come on, you all have them, dont you?) and came across the earing piece. I am very happy with how it ended up. What do you think?

And last, but not least, the MOP necklace I made from the pendant Christa stitched for me.

I LOVED the pendant and did not want to overwhelm it or take from the simple beauty

she had created. The snowflake spacers, bead caps, clasp and the blue dyed fire agate rounds are all from Christa. I added the farfalle beads, I love the texture of them. They look like a stitched chain but were very easy to string together as my hand was not up to much else.

It is my favorite for a few reasons. It reminds me of Christa and makes me think of her stitching it up just for me and that makes me smile, It is just so pretty :~) and it sings of warm breezes and hammock swings. Peaceful. 

Well, Thank you for sticking with me through the whole post. I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I have. And again I apologise for the hickup of lateness :~)