Bead Soup Blog Party 8: Revealed!

AND late, so sorry about that. -_-; Things didn't quite go as planned, in between working a double shift yesterday, returning home an hour before midnight so worn out that I slept in until noon today, which hasn't happened to me in a very long time. So then I scrambled to get all things household done, because I've got another super busy week ahead of me. It wasn't until I finally got to sit down and work on my weekly review post that I noticed my reveal post was still sitting in Blogger's drafts folder, and hadn't gone online as scheduled. Because I forgot to hit the "publish" button, no doubt.

My sincere apologies to all who came to this site only to find nothing's there, especially my super sweet partner Melissa. As a reminder, this is the bead soup she sent me:

I didn't use all of this soup, but I definitely got my jewelry mojo back, as I ended up creating four pieces with it, two necklaces, and two pairs of earrings:

What gave me the most trouble, was this gorgeous, but huge, huge focal Melissa sent me:

I almost ended up not using it at all, because my original plan for it didn't work out. I wanted to create a beadwoven bail for it, but since I'm no seed beader, of course I didn't have the beads required around. And while I do acknowledge that Miyuki beads are of superior quality, I refuse to pay €5 for 6 grams, when I know I can get them for less than half of it online. Needless to say, those beads appear still to be stuck in postal limbo, even with the one-week-delay for the reveal.

Then I tried pairing the focal against pretty much every brass stamping I own, and while many of them make for great bails, none of them worked for this pendant, due to the relieved surface. But! Just when I was about to give up, I stumbled across a very simplistic bail in my collection, which had been in one of B'sue's Facebook Friday Muse lots. Too bad she no longer offers them, sigh. In any way, this is what I came up with:

It seems that, whenever I've got to deal with unusually large pendants, I reach for my spool of memory wire. *laughs* This necklace is still missing a clasp (and it definitely needs one, due to the weight of the focal and those large turquoise colored beads in the front), but otherwise I love how it came out. It has a very rich feeling to it, with the warm gold, the pearl, and the faceted "gems".  

The other focal was an easy one to deal with. It's sunny, warm yellow demanded to be paired with copper, and since the chain I picked, also had golden components, it allowed me to bring in the cloisonne beads for an added pop of color. <3 p="">

This is where the dainty wire rose clasp ended up, by the way. I'm pretty sure this necklace will turn out to be a summer favorite of mine:

I also ended up creating two pairs of earrings, the first using hand-painted brass components: 

 And the second using copper plated filigree connectors, with earhooks I created from the leftover lengths of wire from the headpins I used for the orange frosted beads:

I'm a little sad I didn't use more of Melissa's bead soup, but I always can do that later. Those yellow beads she sent, would look great paired with copper, and I've already got plans for that lampwork bead.

Now, off you go, head over to Melissa's blog Beadrecipes and see what she created with the bead soup I sent her, and then to hostess Lori Anderson's blog Pretty Things for the full list of participants and links to their blogs.

© 2014 Stories from the City of Brass