Club Creative Studio’s post today highlights the special delivery from the mail this afternoon. My special arrival came today, it was a box of beautiful beads. The beads in my photograph were sent to me specifically for the Bead Challenge called: Bead Soup Challenge & Blog Party, #7.
Susan Sheehan is my Bead Soup Bead Challenge Buddy. We were paired from over 500 participants in Lori Anderson’s Bead Soup and Blog Party Challenge. She is from New Hampshire and works primarily in glass, creating wonderful beads, many with the floral motif theme (which is right up my alley). We exchanged boxes and I received mine today! She should get the box that I sent her by Monday.
The excitement starts to build the minute you are assigned your bead partner’s name and location. I had a chance to look on Susan’s website and read a few blogs once I knew she was assigned to me. With exchanged contact information we are able to keep track and communicate along our creative journey. It is wonderful that we have put together totally different packages to inspire each other. She creates in her studio and can be found selling her art at: http://www.susansheehan.etsy.com The challenge aspect comes next as we sit in front of the bead stash wondering what to create and how to use the elements in front of us. I anticipate using a few of my own items as well, but, the majority of the supplies will come from the pile she has gifted me.
What’s in her shared treasure box?
Admiring this selection, the first impression that I had was she has a great sense of color. The combinations are wonderful and I am inspired to create starting with a good color palate in front of me from the get-go. She included an array in styles of beads which will certainly make for an eclectic feel of whatever I end up creating from this collection of bead types. I am faced with working with a variety of shapes, sizes and weights of beads and that is a challenge unto itself. I am not afraid of mixing metals so the copper-colored chain and the silver clasp and bead caps don’t frighten me.
Susan has challenged me to basically create using pink, turquoise, and brown. There are many larger beads all of which can combine to become focal beads or serve as a focal bead all alone. The obvious choice is using the large amber-colored glass round as the main focal bead. It made me think immediately of using it as part of a center tassel, at first glance so I will see if that changes when I hit the design table or not.
The tube beads dotted with mini-seed beads and floral theme motif are about one inch long, there are four of those. Two brown rounds are not identical but have been made with the same feel. She included six interesting pink glass mosaic feel beads that shimmer in the light, those are cool as well. With an interesting mixture of tiny crystals and Lucite, I can imagine using them as little accents of color and dangle beads right now at first glance.
The highlight of her box are of course her hand-made glass floral beads. She has included ten for me to use in my creation. They are dotted with spots of turquoise, pink, brown, orange and a little bit of purple. Wonderful!
After I let my “soup” simmer overnight, I will think about what I want to create and then sit down and design, arrange and question. I plan to document my creative thought process and share the development of my special arrival…my box of beautiful beads. Be sure to visit this blog again as well as the Club Creative Studio Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/clubcreativestudio for updates on my beading challenge process.
Related articles
- Enjoy Bead Soup (clubcreativestudio.wordpress.com)
- My Latest Beading Challenge (clubcreativestudio.wordpress.com)
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