Touring by Slow Coach

Original Designs by Bead Soup Partiers

For the past two weeks (and a day) I've toured the Bead Soup party blogs on the slow coach.

That first Saturday, I averaged 3-5 blogs an hour.  Then I did the math.  At 5 blogs per hour divided by 210 blogs, that would mean  42 hours.  Yikes!  So I tried to pick up the pace, but at this point, I have to simply accept the fact that I'm slow.  I start reading, get caught by links that lead to other blogs or posts, visit Etsy sites and older posts and generally like to poke and peek into all the corners along the way.  And I took notes.  Here's a compilation of my findings:

Favorite Designs (clockwise from top left)
Mistress Boleyn's Necklace by Christine Damm
Sea Anemone by Kristin Latimer
Tranquil Hideaway by Kim Hutchinson
Untitled by  Niky Sayers
Untitled by  Marian Hertzog 
Untitled by Laura Zeiner

Some unusual jewelry components

Most Unusual Components (clockwise from top left)
Wooden "pod" shapes used by Marie-Noel Voyer-Cramp. She made several pieces with various pod shapes sent by her trading partner Claire, who also used "woody" beads in her piece.
Rattlesnake vertebra used by Cathryn Brooks-Williams in her piece "Southwestern Influence"
Bars and discs used by Michelle Heim, sent by Serena Trent.  I would have found the striped polymer clay bars very intimidating to work with, but Michelle made it look easy.

Most Interesting Photographic Backgrounds

This interests me as I think about ways to improve my own photography

•  Black book cloth with reverse embossed  letters
• Stone tiles
• Several bloggers photographed their work on manikins, but I really liked Janna’s, covered as it is with pages from old books.  
• Book pages or music.  Several blogs used this; I found I liked it best when the work was photographed on a flat page (not an opened book), or several sheaves of paper.  
• Collages could be very effective, but I preferred those with borders between images (so that's what I used in this post).

I also found it interesting how interconnected the various blogs were. Quite a number of the Bead Soup participants are also involved with the Color Palette blog walk, Art Bead Scene's monthly challenges, Maggie and Me's monthly challenges (run by one of the bead soup partiers), and Pay it Forward, amongst others.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering Art Bead Scene is how I first encountered Lori's blog, Pretty Things, and discovered Bead Soup.  It's a surprisingly small, close-knit community spread around the world and this blog tour on the slow coach was an amazing introduction.