My bead soup from Gail and my soup to her

Hello friends!

Ok so Gail and I kind of cheated... She was going to be gone for almost 5 days and would not be in town to receive my package to her. Sooooo we decided to swap pictures of what we were sending :D I have to admit I am a terrible secret keeper when it comes to gifts. My sister and I always end up being so excited about our Christmas and birthday presents we get eachother we usually break down and exchange early. As you noticed there is a pattern here ;)

Wanna see what I got?!

 
Here is a shot of the inside of my priority mailer. There is a sweet handmade card by Gail of her two sweet pups. A schnoodle and an aussie :D The caption says "All is Calm". So cute! You can also see the pretty fabric bags gently wrapped in tissue.

Of course my own bead sniffers were happy to help me inspect the treasures inside my package.
 
Here are the bags outside of the box. Each one had it's own little manila folder looking card with Gails beautiful work and a hand written note inside telling me what each piece is :D

Here are those cool cards I was mentioning above. Sweet huh?
 
Here is a shot of the whole stash. The sun was shining in the window and making the beads look all pretty. For some reason the photo didn't capture the shiny awesomeness, but WOW look at all of these beads!!

 

I was SUPER excited to get these GORGEOUS stitched beads by Gail. She is so sweet. She stayed up until 3am making them for me! 

 

Here are some Czech pressed glass beads and Swarovski crystals from Gail's personal stash :) 

 

Here are the goodies she picked up for me at one of her local bead shops! It's so exciting to get things from bead shops out of town. Everyone has awesome different things!  I LOVE the raku clay spacers and enameled daisies and clasp! Can't wait to work those into a design!

 

Check these babies out! I had my eye on that little "Witchhazel" trinket box a long while back so I was excited to receive it in my stash. Look at the awesome daisy pendant and the cool book looking pendant! These pieces are from the Susan Lenart Kazmer collection.

 

A HUGEMUNGOUS stash of seed beads! Gail LOVES seed beads and purple so I was touched she sent her favorites to me :) 

I have all of my goodies sitting out on my bead mat waiting for the ideas to come. I am thinking I would like to make some pieces to add to the wonderful selection Gail sent me, but I need to let them "speak" to me first. 

MY SOUP FOR GAIL.....

Wanna see what I sent Gail? Don't worry, I am not ruining the surprise here ;) We already swapped beady pics first on Facebook.

Ok so I got a little bit carried away, but I couldn't help it! I'm a gifter if you didn't know that about me already. Gifters are just as excited about giving you the gift as you are about receiving it. It gives us such pleasure to create something special for you and wait to see your excited reaction! 

I am also a "Little bits" person. I am the one that likes "little bits" of everything. Like when I go out for breakfast I order the plate with: eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, biscuits and gravy and a pancake(before I was gluten intolerant of course)!

So with that in mind I went to work....

 

I sent one of my Ancient Tablet series focals called "Dreamer".

 

Yes, I am aware that there are 4 pictures of this bead, but LOOK at it! You still can't see EVERYTHING there is to see on this bead ;)

 

Some Ivory, black and silver headpins. I just LOVE the reaction of silver and ivory together! SOOO PRETTY!

 

My "Desert Serpent" style lentils.

 

Some rainbowy raku and black headpins. The heart focal headpin was a new design. This baby was SUPER hard to make and shape as you can't put a lot of pressure for shaping on a wire like you can a mandrel. It turned out awesome, but to make more would take forever!

 

The glass toggle! I was SOOOO excited about this one. Ok, I was excited about ALL of them, but, dude, it's a TOGGLE! The thing you may not know about it is that I had to dremmel the inside quite a bit because when I went to wire wrap the bar the wire wrap and bar wouldn't fit through the hole! Eep! Thank God the crisis was averted! ;)

 

Again with the too many colors and wanted to capture the feel of the clasp in it's entirety.

 
Rainbowy spacers. What design is complete without some spacers?! 
Let's see YOUR bead soup!!
xo Genea