BSBP 8, The Reveal

Hello dear friends! As exciting as ever was this 8th international bead swap!
Suomenkielinen versio tämän postauksen alapuolella!


As a reminder the photo of the soup I got from my partner, Nicole Valentine, from Canada.

The colors are very pleasant to my eye and I had a lot of ideas what to make. The first piece I completed was the bracelet with the toggle made by Nicole and everything else from my own stash, lots of small faceted czech beads linked with sterling wire. I decided to replace the hook of the toggle with a bar.

This is mine :-)

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I also had many ideas how to use the lovely lampwork set made by Nicole. The first necklace combines the biggest lampwork bead from the soup with the small faceted glass beads and turquoise lampwork bead from my own stash. I have lately become an enthusiastic of braiding kumihimo and so the half of the necklace is a kumihimo braid and the other half is a sterling rolo chain; the pendant moves easily on either.

"Méduse"

My sister was so kind to lend her neck for the photos, you see how the mood changes if you have the kumihimo braid or the chain in front.



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For another necklace I continued the same colorway, I really love this combination, olive green and turquoise, but added white to it. I had the turquoise lampwork and some light blue chalcedony beads to go with Nicole's lovelies. I did not want to link them with wire nor I wanted to use the beading wire. I tried a cord (Toho) and was happy with it. I tried the knots, and was very surprised to find freshwater pearls with big enough holes to have that Toho cord getting through them. Did you know how "soft" a necklace with knotted cord is? Lovely to wear!

 "Aqua garden"

I was already very happy to have used so much of the soup I got. Well, the toggle and, let me count... okay, 4 lampwork beads... Was that not enough?


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Hmm... all right, a difficult part, magnesite beads from Nicole, quite big ones but nice :-)
I just happened to find my copper beads and jump rings, I don't often use copper but I have some of it. That was a charming combination. I also had a magnesite donut in my stash and had a very interesting metal link given from a beading friend, Vikki (she takes awesome photos in finnish nature!).

All these elements combined, I'm quite content with my F.O.X. necklace. The Jens Pind chainmaille is not at all difficult to weave and I must get myself weaving more of these chains!

 "F.O.X."

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Finally, after finding the copper, I began to think about gold, too!
So I made a pendant of one of Nicole's lampwork beads, which had both gold and silver dots in it. The
bead cap, closed ring and chain are vermeil.

"Treasure"

That's all from me! Please, visit my swap partner, Nicole, here

 The soups I sent to my partner:

And you'll find the list of links to all, about 500 international participants, on our great and one of a kind hostess Lori Anderson's blog, here.

If you have time and interest, you'll find all my earlier bead soups and reveals, links here!
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