Soup is on Simmer

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by to comment and/or left a FB, Twitter or other message about my 1,000th blog post and big giveaway.  The second winner will be announced tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am way overdue posting about the soup ingredients I received from my partner as part of the 8th Bead Soup Blog Hop.  My partner is Jennifer and here's what she sent me:

There's a large ceramic focal, two small ceramic square beads that coordinate in color with the focal, wooden barrel beads, carved faux-cinnabar white disks, some small turquoise cube beads and a brass wire hook clasp.

 

Here's a closeup of the focal - it's got pretty shades of peach and slate blue although it does change color depending on what light it's under.  I brought it into the office to show a co-worker (who by sheer odd chance is ALSO participating in this blog hop) and the color was totally different!

And here's the funny part...those carved white disks?  I sent Jennifer the EXACT SAME BEADS!  And we exchanged almost no wants/likes/dislikes at all.  The only thing we both agreed on was that neither of us are seed beaders and so probably wouldn't use or need seed beads.  We were both totally open as far as color scheme and everything.  It's crazy.

Not only that, but those wooden barrell beads?  I already have a whole strand of them!  There must be some kind of great beader hive mind that we all tap into sometimes because I just find this so weird and such a strange coincidence!

Don't believe me?  Here's proof:

Here's a sampling of what I sent to Jennifer and you can see the white carved beads at the top and bottom of the photo!

I would say we weren't all that far off on color scheme either...both using cream and brown.  I sent her some brighter accents of orange and lime green and she sent me more subdued colors of peach and blue but still...how bizarre is this?!

I think my biggest challenge is going to be working with the focal I received.  It's beautiful, but the placement and small size of the hole have me a bit puzzled.  Normally, I would use a bead like this as part of a button/loop closure on a bracelet, but this bead is too large and heavy for that.  I can use wire or cord to form a bail and turn it into a pendant, but I don't want to cover up the colors of the bead or (if I use wire) scratch the surface of the glaze, so I've definitely got my thinking cap on about what to do here.

I've already determined that the coordinating ceramic square discs are probably too small to fit into the same piece with the large bead, but I think they will be perfect for earrings and I have an almost finished picture in my head of what those earrings are going to look like.  I need one more component which I'm not sure I have in my stash (hard to believe!) so I may have to get it elsewhere.

I love the little turquoise cubes and will definitely be using those as accent beads either in the earrings or in a separate piece.

That's where I'm at today...we'll see what comes out of the soup pot by reveal day.  If you want to check out some of my past soups, you can go here, here and here.

KJ