Friday, May 30, 2014

Ocean Blog Hop Reveal is here!


Well the day has finally arrived!  I have been working on my pieces for awhile.  As you recall I wasn't thrilled to get items that were orange because it happens to be my least favorite color,  haha.  Took me the longest time to get my mind wrapped around the colors and a beach theme. The focal is so cute and I just love the blues and pinks in it so I decided to add some turquoise and some shells to the mix.  As you can see in the first pictures the top two photo's are what I got in the package.  Thank you Lisa for stretching my creativity. 





I remembered I had these cute little anchors in copper which I thought would go well with the colors so I figured out how to attach to the beads and have it lay right, which I gotta tell you turned out to be a little bit harder than I expected.  I tried to add copper wire guards but they weren't wide enough. Then I made this cute bracelet with a fish clasp and made three pairs of earrings all different so depending on how sassy you want to be you could get several looks.




These last two are close ups.  Don't you just love the cute sea shells in orange sea glass that hang from the first pair of earrings on the left.

Please comment and then hop on over to the rest of the participants at Lori Lodge's Pine Ridge Treasures   Beach Hop Blog Party


Thanks for taking a peek.  If your looking for my post on the Bead Soup Blog Party scroll down just a few entries and you can comment there too.
Marianne

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Ocean Blog Hop

The Ocean Blog Hop starts this weekend May 31st.  I am in the first reveal so stop by my blog to see what I made!   Remember the orange and white soup I received......well come see what happened to it.

Friday, May 9, 2014

The Reveal! Bead Soup Blog Party

The Reveal is happening now!
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Remember what my partner Marti Conrad sent to me in this really cute packaging:  I immediately thought of my friend Jeannie who made my husband Gary a yo-yo quilt when we got married. Jeannie is such an excellent quilter. We all spent many hours making over 500 yo yo's.  I vowed I would never make another one until I saw the packaging! 
Marti loves buttons so as soon as I took these little packages out of the box I remembered I had these cute buttons made out of polymer clay ( I am sorry I don't remember the artist) that look like quilting squares:



So from the packaging and my buttons I made this necklace after I made yo-yo's out of the blue jean wrappers for my friend Jeannie!

 I just love how it turned out.  I even used the yarn Marti tied it in.  I also used the adorable heart clasp in the necklace because it went so well with it. The clasp was made by Jean Wells especially for Marti to send to me. The clasp is handmade in copper.

Now the actual Bead Soup!

Marti sent me a huge array of beads and a beautiful focal

 Here is the focal and clasp by themselves.  The focal is so unusual you have to visit Marti's blog to see her inspiration.  I think she totally nailed it!


I never work with gemstones but this soup was so colorful and had so many different textures it was really fun to step outside the box and come up with a necklace. I added some gold links and a gold clasp.  Here is my finished piece. Reminds me of summer which is just around the corner.



I also made 4 different earring sets so you could wear different pairs depending on your mood:)  I added some chain from my stash and a couple of beads. I have enough beads to later make a bracelet!





I promised earlier that I would be giving away the second bead soup I made for my partner.  If you make a comment to this post I will randomly select the person who will receive this special Soup that features one of my new copper focals. I am not going to reveal it just yet but I think you will enjoy it.  (I may even include one of my fused glass pendants:)  Drawing will be held on June 15th so everyone has a chance to enter.

Also please visit our wonderful leader Lori Anderson who started this event and does all the work to keep track of everybody, match partners and keeps us up to date which is no small feat because there are almost 500 of us.
Here is where you can find the list of participants.  Bead Soup 8 participants  Please visit as many as you can.
Enjoy,
Marianne