Soup Received!

Hello friends!

I bet you are super excited to see what I received from my BSBP partner, Heather Powers!

My dad handed me my package that came in the mail from Heather. I snatched it out of his hands and proceeded to tear into the package. I realized I should snap some pictures as I excitedly tore through the package so I grabbed my camera and snapped and layed things out in the island in my parents kitchen.

 

As you may know I am a sucker for details. I loved the cuttle little doodle Heather drew on the outside of my envelope :)

 

Inside the package were these lovely little brown paper bags tied with lovely ribbons and a card.

 

Awww how sweet! A lovely handmade card celebrating Heather's home town <3 The card is by Lief Design.

Inside the card Heather's note revealed that in the contents of the gray ribbon package was my "stretching my color palette" challenge in muted and pastel color scheme.

 

Here is a shot of those cute little paper bags. Remember, I'm a sucker for details and cute organizational packaging. I was at Michael's the other day and found these lovely little bags for sale! I was tempted to pick some up, but decided to pass them by. I believe it was a set of 25 bags for like $2-3 bucks(if you decide you need some!) ;)

 

These were the treasures I found in the first little brown bag! WOW! They are even more amazing in person(which is usually the case since pictures can never truly capture art works awesomeness!)  Just look at all of the lovely little details in the beads! The top rounds and barrel bead are made with canes and the flower pendant looks like it was maybe pressed, carved, sanded and painted! So awesome! I'm just so impressed with Heather's unique and amazing style!

 

Upon opening the next 2 little brown bags I found these other treasures! A very beautiful heart bead with a bird sitting on a nest with an egg, a feather, bird and speckled egg in the top right corner. In the bottom left corner a wonderful selection of smoky quartz rounds, lucite flowers, pressed Czech glass rondelles and leaves and a gorgeous sunflower clasp by Green Girl Studios! I think the heart shaped pendant with the bird in the next is my favorite from this set. The details are just incredible and it's so teeny so I am, again, so impressed with Heather's artistic skill! She must have an incredibly steady hand to detail such a wonderful little work of art. The painting on the bead is just lovely too with a wonderful watercolor looking effect for the sky that is a soft blue and green and the bird and nest being a light to darker brown!

 

Here is a wonderful detail shot I stole from Heather's Etsy shop. This is very similar to my pendant. You can find this beauty in her shop here Meadowlark Pendant Midnight Song .

 

Inside my teal ribbon tied bags were these amazing beads! I don't know if you can really tell from the photo, but the beads are a wonderful deep blue turquoise and a very vibrant magenta with some touches of brown! They are SOOOOO pretty! Heather is just so stinkin' talented! 

 

Here are the other beads that were inside the teal ribbon set. Some gorgeous matching pressed Czech glass beads (and acrylic beads from Vintage Meadow Artwork by Heather French) and a beautiful button clasp by Mamacita Beadworks. Heather really has a wonderful eye for color as you can see by her pieces and the complimentary extra beads! 

I decided to dive into my challenge pastel/muted mix first! I have them happily sitting on my bead mat waiting to be made into something.

HEATHER'S SOUP FROM ME...

Ok so you saw the teaser photo of Heather's bead, but how about we put it into focus?

 

Here is the mixture of beads I sent with Heather's soup. I knew this was WAY outside of her normal colors so I tried to send a lot of little things for her to use in her design since she probably didn't have many of these colors in her bead box. From top left to right: Large lucite hoops and handmade painted plexi glass by Yvonne Irvin-Faus of My ELEMENTS, a mixture of some very colorful fun shaped pressed Czech glass beads from my many bead shop travels(daggers, spades, drops, faceted rounds, and rondelles), a mixture of many sizes of aluminum jump rings, and a wonderful mix of: pixies, 8's, rubber o's and lucite hoops from My ELEMENTS.

 

I sent some of my favs to Heather for her design! You know me and my "little bits," I had to send: a bead-inside-a-bead-hollow focal, a flower heart button, some swirly spacers, wing dings and some spiral pod glass headpins! My girls from our Bead Babe's group on Facebook told me I should really give Heather a challenge and send her beads in my bright colors palette. Apparently the new HOT Pantone color for this year is Tangerine Tango, which looks like a bright orangey coral to me(luckily I have boat loads of an odd lot in just the perfect hue!).

 

Here is a close-up of her bead-inside-a-bead-hollow :)

 

Here is one last shot of the full soup serving!

If you are looking for beads like these I am sad to say that after my moving sale I am pretty wiped out. Don't worry though! My studio is back up and I will begin re-stocking my goodies soon!

Thanks so much for stopping by to  check out our soups! I hope you have fun designing with yours!

See you soon!

xo Genea