I'm late... I'm late..... I'm really, really late!!!!

I have now had the time to upload the pictures of my bead soup to Therese, I hope she enjoys the soup. For my first time in the soup, it was so very hard to pick out what someone else would like. Therese is  a very talented artist and I bet she is about to amaze me and many others!

As I mention it is my first bead soup hop and Therese thought she would like to make it special for me. Her generosity has left me quite speechless.  Not only did she give me all these wonderful beads...look at the Box.. so very beautiful.

The beads are a lovely selection, I spent almost 2 days trying to decide what to work on first.   We will just have to wait and see what everyone dreams up.

Fingers Crossed

Here's hoping our bead soup arrives this week!

Bead Soup Partner, Therese

I have been a bit slow to get this posted. I work all day as a Data
base Manager & IT support for  one of the largest hospitals in Ontario. You would think  working on computers would be like breathing.  Not so, I am just as afraid of working on new stuff as anyone else.
I have never blogged before so I am a bit timid; then I saw what a lovely announcement my beading partner did for me on HER site. So here goes..

Therese Frank is my beading partner and she works as a Police Dispatcher in Montgomery Alabama.

Therese works with seed beads, and boy!!!! once she gets her soup she is going to be challenged...I hope!!!

The above mystery photo was borrowed from Therese's blog , It is my bead soup from Therese...interesting , should arrive this week in the mail.

Also borrowed from Therese's blog is a sample of the style of work she does. Look at all those wonderful beads. I really envy artists that have the patience to work with beads, just incredible and absolutely beautiful.  This is not one of Therese own designs as she mentions in her blog; she bought the tutorial from "Monomint Beading Design" (Etsy ) a James Farrand pattern.

Look what she has done with this......I love the colours!!!!!

Tree of Life for Kyla

A girlfriend of my daughter is also finishing up high school in June and then off she goes to either university or college. It is so hard to believe these girls have reached this point in their lives. It seems like yesterday they were all so excited about ending grade 8 and then off to high school and NOW it  has come to an end. Kyla has been a school mate of my daughter's since grade 6.

I always wanted to make the tree of life but it isn't my "thing " to wear, so when I recently found out that Kyla loves that type of jewelry, that was all I needed for an excuse.


I made the frame with 16 gauge bronze and the rest of the wire is coated copper. The beads in the tree are an assortment of browns, coppers, rusts, yellows of glass beads with some green Adventurine and Coral Cupolini gemstone chip beads.
The necklace is also a combination of the same beads I used in the ,pendant BUT there are 4 big butterscotch coloured glass beads (my favourite) and some chocolate coloured porcelain beads near where the pendant will sit.  Sound like I am making a dessert!!
Finally the tutorial for the tree (necklace was actually my design) is from "Beading on a budget"  Jamie Anderson (Etsy store).

Penny..till we meet again......

Bead Soup for Therese

What can I say,  a beautiful collection of ingredients and guess what.......It's in the mail!!!!!!!

IZA's Butterfly is DONE

Wow!!!!! this took me so long to make and I know why........FEAR.

The tutorial was great, easy to understand and I highly recommend it. Iza Malczyk  asked me to send her a picture when I finished it.  No pressure here!!!!!!!   I really hope she likes the look of it, it sure doesn't look much like hers............My problem --> I was working with expensive wire, the first time for me. It was not sterling or fine silver but it was new to me . I bought it off Etsy from someone I love to shop with, great guy , great service and if you knew me, you would know why I am not telling you his name or the type of wire I used. Okay, okay the truth is, I have a terrible memory for  names....  The wire at least was silver plated with a white core of some description.  Enough about that , I can tell you the bead in the center is a purple lampwork bead that I can't remember where I got it and the stones are  Swarvorski  and you guessed it..... I can't remember where I got them either.
I want to share something I did find to be true and great advice.  I have been working on this for at least a couple of months; while finishing it up today I noticed it had turned a bit on the yellow side (colour). I thought with all the ins and outs it would take me a couple more months to clean it, since I couldn't remember where my cleaning cloths were. So I remember one  wonderful teacher (my apologies... that's right can't remember her name) from Jewelry lessons.com mentioning she used Dawn dishwashing soap to clean up her jewelry, So I put a good size drop in my ultrasonic jewelry cleaner machine and presto  this butterfly is just simply gleaming.

Well it is Tuesday Feb. 5th, I was feeling poorly this morning so decided to stay home and rest. At about 4:00, I started to think about what to send my partner in The 2013 Bead Soup Activity. My primary concern was: "how much to send" ? How much is too much? How much is not enough?  I am so very glad I found some pictures from previous soupers. I want my partner to love what I send BUT I feel it is improtant to not cramp their style or their designing talents. I want them to use my beads and things as a guideline for something that is of their own imagination.

I must have signed up for the 3rd reveal date...of course with my 2 second memory I have forgotten. So I wait......  I wonder how many times I will change up my soup before I need to get it in the mail. For those of you that suffer from the same problem "I can't make up my mind" and "Oh! hang! "just send it all" Maybe I should take my picture and then get it ready for posting...yeah like that is going to work, I'll just unwrap it.  THIS is going to be SOOO much fun!!!!!!!

Yum! Bead Soup

Today I went to my email and found what I had been looking for..news from the 7th annual Bead Soup Party. It was just sheer luck I didn't sign up for the first due date..why you ask? I am so new at this blog thing I can't even figure out how to add the "button" Lori suggested we add..this could take a while.
I will start to make my soup and wait patiently to be matched up.  Oh I do hope I have done this right and  they will find me, it is a very BIG world out there.