bead soup blog party reveal day!

i am so so so thrilled to be participating in lori anderson's bead soup party for the very first time! this is my second challenge ev-er, but i'm not a newbie to beading. i got my first beads in sixth grade from my dear mama. she was garage saleing in coos bay, oregon and came across a box of beads and brought them home to me. why me and not my sister? i was into crafts and she wasn't. all my life i've tried to get my sisterinto beading, and it never took till eight years ago when she was put on bed rest for the last trimester of her first pregnancy. i was in alaska and she was in seattle and i went down to keep her company and brought along some of my beads. we're both readers but there's only so much reading you can do before it starts to pale. so she tried the beads... and loved it! yay! my favorite person in the whole wide world joined me in my love and now we own our own business selling our jewelry in fairbanks, alaska. you can visit her here. she is also in the party.

so now that you have a little history on my beading, let me introduce my soup partner, cassie donlen. she is a dear woman who is fabulously talented. she is a lampworker and metalsmith who has been published and who's site is here. her main store is here and her little store on etsy is here. she sent me these beads. aren't they completely a-maz-ing?!? she made the lampwork, the toggle, and the focal. the rest of the soup are all vintage czech. the cones are pewter.

without further ado here is what i made---

i just love how they turned out!

this was so much fun! lori worked so hard and made this a wonderful experience. i hope i'll get to do it again.

to visit the rest of the blogs visit lori anderson's blog here. have fun perusing everyone's blogs!