It's party time!

I hope you've been looking forward to today. It's the day of the big reveal. 362 bloggers from around the world showing what they've made with their bead soups. For a full list of participants and links to their blogs, please see Friday's post or the BSBP site.

Every participant has been paired up with a partner to swap a mouth-watering and inspiring batch of bead soup to. Each soup had to include a focal and a fancy clasp -- which were mandatory to use -- and some matching beads and components. My partner was Sue of Hello Gorgeous in Wales, who sent me this lovely and challenging soup, which also included candy from Pwllheli (which I ate before I thought of taking photos of the whole package!) and dragons: a coaster and pin. I love dragons.

What I especially liked about my soup was the blend of things I like and things I don't use very often. I love autumn colours and -- this I hadn't told Sue -- soosho/tri-colour jade is one of the relatively few stone beads I really, really enjoy working with. On the other hand, the beads were big. I often go for the more dainty sizes even if I wish I would try bigger beads sometimes. So that was a big unusual, trying to design with larger beads than normal. The focal had colours and patterns that really spoke to me. It's not the type of focal I usually work with, but I fell for it instantly. And finally, the silver clasp. I rarely work with silver. A price issue of cause, but also because I prefer the colour of brass, copper and blackened metal. I also rarely work with this type of big focal toggle clasps -- and it was the clasp that was the toughest thing to design for.

I ended up making two pieces as I felt the clasp would do nice as a focal itself. It might have worked in the same piece as the shell focal without the two trying to overpower each other, but I made the easy choice of separating them into two projects. First I made a necklace:

For this necklace, I linked the "jade" rounds with oxidized brass heart links. While I knew pretty much from the start that I wanted to link rather than string the stone beads, it took a long time before I settled with this design. I tried so many things, but in the end I felt it was best to keep it simple. And anyway, battling with my natural impulse to work symmetrically (which I wrote about here), it still took some time to do as I kept reorganizing the order of the beads. Again and again. Ending with a compromise of sorts: it's a very tame asymmetry in colours in that necklace.

I also linked the focal to one of  the heart links. The focal has an oxidized brass rose tied to the centre hole and a bead dangling from the bottom to add weight and stability.

I added twist threads to either side of the bead chain for two reasons: 1) I ran out of beads and brass links. 2) I didn't want any big beads in the back. It's not comfortable -- and I had found some silky thread in by yarn and ribbon bag, which matched the shell focal perfectly in colour. Fearing adding other beads would disturb the design, fibre felt like a better solution than adding beads and links in a different shape and size.

I'm not sure whether I'll keep the ends dangling like that. At one point I wanted to just have the twisted cord and use it as closure, tying a nice bow in the back. But the beads are so heavy I feared the silky cord just wasn't going to work. Instead I added crimp ends and a simple little brass s-hook. I still have the cord end, which I can tie over the clasp. But should I keep them or not? What do you -- who actually reads all this text, not just look at the pictures -- think? I'd love to hear it.

With this design it's really hard to get a good photo unless you hang the necklace up. On a model or something else, just not lay it flat. That's also why there's a towel in the last photo: I needed something with pile to keep the beads from rolling away.

So that was the necklace. What happened with the clasp?

Oh, how many times have I re-made this one? At first I found the perfect beads. At least when it came to material: the vesuvianite looked fab against the silver. But I only had some chips and no idea incorporating them worked. Moving on. I wanted really bad to use the smoky beads eventhough I didn't have to. I think that hampered me as I focused on just using semi-precious when it really isn't something I use very often. Then finally overcame that hurdle and opted for fire-polished, reflecting the facets in the quartz beads. But, again, didn't really work. In the end, I got back to just using the only smokey quartz beads I have in my stash, interspersed with sterling silver beads. And I lost one of the bead soup beads in the process. It disappeared without a trace! I've looked everywhere. Well, I guess the cats will find it sooner or later...

Before I end, I must show Goch. He's the dragon I got from Sue and of cause he wanted some bling too so I gave hime a necklace made from a scrap of gold-filled dainty chain and an abused gold-plated crimp cover. (The coaster he's sitting on is also a gift from Sue.)

~*~

Wondering where to go next? My suggestion would be the fabulous and generous hostess of this blog party, Lori Anderson, and my likewise fabulous partner Sue Hodgkinson. Below is a pic that will give you an idea about what Sue had to work with. A complete list of participants can be found on Lori's blog.