Bead Soup Blog Party (#2)

Two Saturdays ago, my Bead Soup arrived in the mail from Michelle Buettner of MiShel Designs! I finally got some pics of the beautiful soup.

Isn't the packaging nice? *makes note to self for next time* *cough*

There are a lot of lovely beads in there – quartz, chalcedony, onyx, opalite (which we actually sent each other! hah!). Can't wait to make something with them. I may go totally traditional and do a strung necklace – the clasp seems to want to be on a strung necklace rather than a chain one like I've been doing lately. OR I will totally do something with chain, who knows? 🙂

What to do, what to do… I look forward to working with these fabulous beads! They are outside my usual color palette so it will be a good challenge for me to think outside the box! Thanks Michelle!

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I went to the Gem Faire with Janelle in Sacramento and we had a BLAST. I like the Gem Faire because it seems to have booths that have more wholesale pricing than the Oakland shows. (The Oakland shows tend to have more famous artists and art beads and prices to reflect that, not that there's anything wrong with that.) Janelle bought various findings and got some great deals on shiny beads (her favorite!), and I got the following:

Not much in the way of beads, only 4 strands of stones (one turned out to be dyed lavender, my least favorite color of all time – curses upon fluorescent lighting! Oh well, they'll still work even if I thought they were white/clear), a set of cloisoinne owls (for earrings, natch!), and some resin/acrylic flower cabs. They will make great pendants! The rest of stuff is metal findings (at GREAT PRICES, very comparable to what I get at U Bead It, slightly cheaper and tons of metal color options): earrings, ring bases, bails, crimp caps, ball-end head-pins. I am stocked up for a long, long time.

AND since we went a little over a week ago, I have made practically ZERO things to show for it, aside from some rings that I glued cabochons onto. Janelle sent me several texts last week with all the fabulous earrings she has made. I have not only created a monster but the pupil will soon surpass the master, let me tell you.

I was at Walmart the other day and they actually have some interesting findings in their bead aisle – I got some non-glue bails for pieces that have a hole drilled through them. I used it for the big resin rose up there so you will probably see some sort of necklace with that soon.

And by "soon" I mean the next time I get around to posting, haha. I still have two knitting FOs to share, that have been done for approximately forever.