Kettle's Overboiling, Soup's Definitely on....

Soups on!  Bead Soup that is, courtesy of our fabulous hostess, Lori Anderson who organizes the entire show, pairing beaders from around the world to see what they come up with.  Wondering just how big the Bead Soup party is?  Check out this map that Lori put together.  

My partner this time around is the wonderful Tracey Nanstad of A Beadiful Mess.  For a peak at the soup mix she sent, check out my earlier post. 

Her Lucky Robin Bluebird pendant really gave me the fits, trying to figure out what to do with it.  The bail was too prominent (and pretty) to remove, so I couldn't just bead bezel around it like a cabochon.  But it was too narrow to fit any of the various beaded ropes I came up with.

So I finally broke down and pulled out my favorite book on wirework and sat down with my wire-snips and pliers.

While my wireworking is fairly simple, I don't do it often.  It's outside of my comfort zone, which is supposed to be part and parcel of this challenge.  Yeah.   I had fun figuring out how to wire the flower beads onto the metal knots.

I used Tracey's pendant, clasp and silver circles.  Searching through my stash for coordinating beads, I came across the pressed blue beads, leftovers from Kalmbach's bead soup party last fall.  The red beads are garnets - I started to worry that I wouldn't have enough because less than half of them fit onto my wire. 

While I wrestled with what to do with the Robin Bluebird pendant, I noticed that the stone cabochon Tracey sent was perfectly shaped for a fish body.   If you've been following my blog at all lately, you know I'm working with a fish theme this year.

I thought about making a grand daddy of a Fancy Fish.  Instead, I decided to draw a cartoony-style fish with beads.  As I worked, it occurred to me that the way I planned for it to hang, people would only ever see one side of the fish at a time.  So I decided to create a split personality fish, with a different look on either side.  So it's like having two pendants in one.  I made sure that the necklace worked worn either direction as well. 

What started out as a way to pass the time while I waited for inspiration to strike took on a life of it's own:

"Fresh Catch of the Day"

The fish hangs from a felted, beaded bead 'float' that I made.  For the supporting necklace, I wanted to carry on the ocean theme, without becoming too busy, especially since the necklace is quite long.  I stitched a couple of my standard fish bodies, but decided not to add any other identifying details other than a little bead fringe to hint at tails.  For the clasp, I used one of Tracey's textured copper discs, then made a 'fish hook' closure. 

While figuring out the components for my Fresh Catch of the Day, I also stitched a couple of beaded beads and used brick stitch to create several medallions.

By skipping every other bead when adding the fire-polished beads around the outer edge, I came up with a design that reminded me of a ship's helm wheel.   But they never did quite fit into the design.  I turned two of them into a pair of earrings for now.  All three are likely to get used in something else in the future.

So that's what I came up with working from Tracey's Bead Soup.  Now it's time to see what Tracey made with mine.  And to check out what everyone else has made as well.

Lori has a complete list of participants on her blog.