Bead Soup!

Yay!  It's finally here--the second Bead Soup reveal!  *dances*

Now, this was my very first time ever participating in Bead Soup... What a wonderful experience! I was worried when I signed up that I wouldn't be able to deliver--but, wow! All told, I made eight pieces. 

Eight! 

...And that means a lot of pictures. I apologize now for the length of this post, and will do my best to keep my narration to a minimum.

A quick refresher: my partner is the incredibly talented Marianne Baxter, who sent me this soup full of goodies. (Follow the second link if you want to be reminded of what the soup looked like.)

The first piece that I made was a necklace, which used one of the pendants that was sent to me, as well as most of the rest of the soup (beads, chain, and bead caps):

  

I still had a few beads leftover from the soup, so I made these matching earrings:

...As well as this matching hairstick:

Here is everything together:

Now...  You'll notice that, in that necklace, I didn't use the beautiful clasp that my partner sent me. 

Why is that?  Well, the clasp is a more sedated silver than the bright silver above... So, I decided to make another necklace. After all, my wonderful partner had sent me two pendants--I might as well use them both!

So the second necklace incorporates both the other pendant, and the clasp.

I had used up almost the entire soup with the previous set, so almost all of these beads were mine. Still, I think they match the pendant quite nicely!

...And, since I was so inspired, I made earrings and a pair of hairsticks to match said second necklace.

Here is everything together:

Now, while I like the hairstick and earrings, they seemed a little too, well, bright to match the necklace. Again, the silver in the necklace was more understated--an accent color, more than a focal.

So, when our reveal was pushed back a week, I used that time to make another pair of earrings and another pair of hairsticks.

The new pair of earrings is much, much simpler and understated. While not as showy, they actually work better for me; the previous pair, while beautiful, is a bit too long for my neck.

The hairsticks are very very special, because they were made with sticks that I 3D modeled myself. I had them 3D printed by an outside source (since I don't have a 3D printer of my own yet), using a purple laser sintered nylon plastic.

Granted, these blanks are still only prototypes (and I'm sure I will blog about them soon)--but how exciting! Hurray for using technology to make something beautiful! :D

And, again, here is the entire set seen together.

So, those are the eight pieces that I made with my Bead Soup. The first set was definitely further outside of my regular style (it's so beautifully bright!), but I really had fun making everything.

Yay!

And with that, I will leave you to your blog hopping. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this... I certainly hope you enjoy seeing my creations as much as I enjoyed making them!  :D

Be sure to check out Marianne's blog to see what she made with the beads that I sent her!

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If you are interested in seeing the works of the other Bead Soup participants in the second reveal, check out the list here.  It will certainly be worth your while!!