Pixybug Designs by Stephanie and Chris Haussler: Valerie Norton

Good Morning! Here are a few notes about the weekend!

Chris will be at the Highland Park Farmers Market from 8-12 tomorrow, while I will be at Julie's until 3 working. Tomorrow is our monthly Bead Group Meeting and we are going to start work on the Beaded Bead Challenge that has been in all of the Beadwork Magazines this year.

Such an awesome photo (borrowed from Nick's Facebook Page)! We will be in Lincoln for a bit to go to our nephew, Nick's Order of the Arrow ceremony. Congrats on all your long, hard, (smelly) hours of dedication to Boy Scouts!

This bracelet (I made from my Bead Soup Mix) has been donated to the Mallory Bush Benefit this weekend.

Bead Soup Blog Party Reveal #2

Be sure to stop by the blog hop for the second group of participating artists reveal! Valerie Norton (Hot Fused Glass) was my partner last year and has informed us that she used some more of the beads from the soup I sent her mixed with her new soup for this reveal!

Hope you have a beautiful, restful weekend! See you next week!

Welcome to the Fall Edition of the Bead Soup Blog Party! A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to Lori Anderson for hosting the event and for being the brilliant woman who began the Bead Soup Party!

This is my third round of Party participation. My first was the Spring 2011 when I created this:

My partner for that round was Shea Zukowski.

Then came the Fairytale Mini Swap this summer. My partner for that round was Sandra Richardson.

For this Fall round, my partner is Valerie Norton. These are the goodies she sent me to work with!

And this is what Chris and I sent to Valerie.

Don't you just love the Beaky Bird Chris made especially for Valerie?! We can't wait to see what she makes with it! So with out further ado, here is my first piece (I created two very different designs to compliment Valerie's two very different dichroic focals).

This focal SCREAMED at me 80's Retro! So I went very FUNKY with it, using fun items to compliment the bright, beautiful colors in the dichroic glass. I visited one of my favorite Etsy shops, MyElements, and picked out some of her fun gizmos and flexible tubing to add to the piece. When I thought of funky, retro, and color-the only place I thought of was MyElements. I love her stuff! So anyway (got distracted, bead, oooh shiny!), on one side I made my own chain links using colored wire run through the hollow tubing to be able to shape it as I wanted to. On the other side I used round gunmetal chain and wire wrapped all the goodies to it. On the side with the rubber links, I took apart some of the chain links to use as jump rings for connecting the pieces of tubing. As much as I LOVE mixed metals and all the varied finishes on the chain, it can be a challenge to find the right findings to go with the finishes. Also by using the pieces of chain it tied the two sides of the necklace together without have them be identical. When I got to the finishing part, I used a mix of hand dyed silk strings and ribbon, and black satin rattail cord. I did loose braids with them so that you could see all the colors in play without the cords running around willy nilly on the ends of the necklace. I used bead cones to attach the lovely sterling silver clasp Valerie sent in my soup mix. I don't know that I am crazy about this aspect of the piece, and I may yet rip it apart and redo that issue. What do you think? I would love your input!
For the second piece, I went more Antique Autumn.

I used a bunch of the beads and the focal Valerie sent me in this piece. There were two strands of tiny Druk beads with a clear/antique bronze color that I used in my wire crocheted strands, there are freshwater pearl, Chinese and Czech crystals, mother of pearl rings, and Czech glass pressed leaves with some gorgeous metallic finishes. ***Please let me apologize for the quality of the photos above. I had to finish the pieces quickly enough to get in on the natural light before it ended for the day. At the point of the photos, the necklace was actually TAPED to my neck with a strip of blue painter's tape. Consequently, it doesn't hang as gracefully in the photos as I would have liked. I did complete the piece around 10:30 and promptly whipped up a pair of earrings for a giveaway using more of the leaves and beads and some lovely twisted copper spacers Valerie sent in my soup mix.*** In the necklace I made wired dangles for the beads using 26g Vintage Bronze colored Parawire and hand twisting each bead on the wire. When I connected the beads to the wire I used the twists like a head pin and twisted them on to attach them. I counted and there are 58 dangles on the necklace. I happened to add 29 to each side! Gosh, I am good! The crocheted ropes gave me a bit of a dilemma in how to attach them and have the piece flow together. Chris suggested I use some coordinating jump rings to connect throughout the rope, and then I wrapped the wire tails to the chain links near the back of the piece. I finished it with a floral textured antique silver toggle clasp.

Now for the Antique Autumn Earring giveaway!

If you leave me a comment on the Bead Soup Blog Party post, you will be entered to win these lovely earrings! I will put all the names through a random generator on September 30th and choose the winner. Please be sure to leave a way for me to contact you or stop back on October 1st to see who the winner is!

Please visit the other Bead Soup Partiers, there are 362 of us! Here is the list with links to all their blogs!