Travels and Surprises

We spent the last ten days traveling to my hometown to attend the wedding of my niece.  It had been two years since I have seen many of my family members so it was really a special visit.  We drove the 350 some miles to get to Saxonburg Pennsylvania with our new camper in tow.  The wedding and visit were awesome.

 I am convinced that the creatures from the other dimension live in Western Pennsylvania... as we traveled the country roads that were lined with forests of trees that canopied over us I was sure I spotted some wee creatures.  We drove through the rain with the sun blinding us as the leprachauns created a rainbow to find their gold.  The roads are winding and narrow with lots of bumps and gullies in them.  My reaction to the terrain surprised me as I spent the first 40 years of my life there. I guess it is the result of living on the coastal plains for the last eight years.  Delaware is very flat and open for the most part.

We drove back east via Phoenixville Pennsylvania so I could meet my bead friends at the Interweave Beadfest show... we stayed at a wonderful KOA campground that was tucked back in an even more remote area than where I grew up.  I love camping!  I also loved the bead show.  My oh my... almost overwhelming!  I bought some fun stuff... like some wool and a felting needle and a kumihimo kit!  I have had some fun with both of them and will post some finished products soon.

When I got home from the trip I had a wonderful surprise waiting for me!  My bead soup partner Melissa Mesara had sent me treasures!  I love her Etsy shop One Eared Pig!  I was excited to see what she sent me.

The box came in the mail!

In the box there was a card and another box!

In the other box were bags of awesome bead soup!

Melissa makes amazing glass beads.  Van Gogh's "Starry Night" was her inspiration for these beads.  I love the color and the metallic streaks.

Definitely "Starry Night"!

 Love these beads and clasp to really make the soup taste good!

More starry night beads to add as well!

 

...and some "just because" beads that are so adorable... the mutant fish has three eyes...

He won't miss a thing with those eyes!

Thanks Melissa!  I can't wait to get started with this bead soup!  I love how creative and eclectic you are!  Even the card was awesome.  This is a picture of Neodymium Chandelier by Dale Chihuly.

Amazing!

Hope you all are having as much fun with this Bead Soup Blog Party as I am!  I am looking forward to see what everyone else creates!

BSBP Partners!

It is time to share our beads and get creative!  My partner is Melissa Mesara who makes amazing glass beads and jewelry!  Check our her blog and her Etsy shop One Eared Pig Beads!  Love that name!  Here is one of my favorites from her Etsy shop.

Green Raku Glass Necklace handmade by Melissa Mesara

The Bead Soup Blog Party is so much fun.  It is fun to put together the soup for your partner and fun to get a present from them too!  It is amazing how creative and inspiring everyone is.  Such a big group of participants this year too.  Thanks Lori Anderson for putting this together!  And thanks to Melissa for being my partner!

Bead Soup Blog Party Time!

Wow!  362 participants in this Bead Soup Blog Party!  This is gonna be fun! 

Check out the list at Lori Andersons Blog Pretty Things.  Thanks Lori for all of your hard work on this!

Etsy Team Fun

Check out this Etsy Delaware Street Team Treasury...Summer Rainbow  !  My Purple Swirl pendant was included in it.

I enjoy Etsy. I don't sell much on there but I still enjoy it. So much creative energy out there!

Stay cool if you can!

Big Beads

I have made some big beads with polymer...  This bracelet reminds me of the Flintstones. I can see Wilma Flintstone wearing this with her one shoulder dinosaur skin dress!  These beads were made using cornstarch packing peanuts.  The packing peanuts I found were green not white. You need to read the label and make sure they are cornstarch peanuts if you want to try this technique.

The cornstarch peanuts will dissolve in water.  To make a big bead base you add a drop of water to a few of them and mush them together into a ball... well at least as close to a ball as you can.  Mine didn't seem to get really round.  You let the peanut mush dry.  You can then wrap clay around the peanut.  You need to poke holes through the clay for bead stringing as well as to get water in the bead to dissolve the peanut mush after baking. The hole needs to be fairly big but not too big.

I found that the beads were light weight but also that they could break if not careful.  You can of course make the clay thicker around the peanut mush. 

I also found it tedious to get the peanut mush out of the bead after baking.  It turned into a green slimy sludge that I had to blow out of the beads after soaking them in water.  It took several times of soaking and blowing through the beads... my jaws were hurting like when you blow up too many balloons... not so fun.

I am always interested in trying new techniques. So when I saw the big beads in this book I had to give it a try!  I purchased Ancient Modern Polymer Clay and Wire Jewelry by Ronna Sarvas Weltman.  I love her polymer work.  It is very organic looking. 

I made a necklace and some earrings using the technique in her book with aluminum foil as a base for the big beads. It worked well. The beads are light in weight and I could get a more round bead.

Something else I learned from the book... I used brown shoe polish to antique the beads.  I am thinking that Renaissance Wax and shoe polish are made from the same chemicals because they sure smell the same! It was interesting to learn some new techniques!  

Bead Soup Blog Party Time is Coming!

It is time once again for the Bead Soup Blog Party!  Our hostess Lori Anderson makes a list of everyone who wants to  participate and pairs us up with someone else.  You send beads from your stash to them and they send beads from their stash to you.  It is so much fun to see what everyone makes and a challenge to make something from beads you might not buy or use yourself.  Definitely gets you out of the box!   It is also a great way to meet new people!  Hope to see you sign up for it!

Micro Macrame

Ok so I confess that I can spend hours playing Bejeweled Blitz and Mahjong on Facebook.  I decided that I needed to find something else to do in the evenings when I am too tired to do anything but watch TV. So I thought I would try a macrame project.  I can sit in my chair with my puppies next to me and work with something little.  Micro macrame sounded like it might be a project to start with.
Under over... over under....  under over...ok so I was kind of a hippie back in the day and it all came back to me when I started on my micro macrame project.  In the 70's we were very cool and thought macrame jewelry was "far out".  Sounds funny now!  Things in life do cycle around. So here I am doing macrame again 30 years later.
 I worked with number 3 thread which is pretty thin but it came together.  I used a pattern purchased from http://www.free-macrame-patterns.com/    I also used what I had on hand and didn't plan too much in advance for this.  It took me a couple of hours but I was able to work on it while watching TV in the evenings. So all in all I am happy with the project.

I will plan ahead and make this bracelet again.  I will make some flat polymer beads and color coordinate a little more.  I enjoyed doing macrame way back when and still found it fun to do!