Bead Soup Blog Party - Playing with Fire

My Bead Soup Blog Party partners, Evie and Beth McCord, presented me with four of their vibrantly toned enameled focals; one for each of the classical elements, air, fire, earth and water. (You can see the entire bead soup here). I tend to create on a very small scale – I consider size 8 seed beads monstrous and if I were going to stray from my typical 3mm crystals, it would be toward 2.5mm, not 4! In the last year I've pushed myself to incorporate larger beads and a greater variety of materials in my work, so these big, beautiful pendants were the perfect challenge!

Have you followed Alan Alda’s challenge to the scientific community to explain to 11-year-olds exactly what a flame is? I’d recently watched the winning entry, an illuminating video by Ben Ames, complete with catchy rock song. So, since flames were already stuck in my head, I chose to design with the fire focal for this challenge.

Expanding on the orange, yellow and red in the luscious lampwork beads from Evie and Beth, I added sterling silver, some richly colored squiggle beads, Czech glass and Kazuri rounds, a bit of red and yellow coral and black agate. Looking to create a neckpiece with firm structure and very little drape, I chose cubic right angle weave, reinforcing each stitch twice to ensure a very square shape. To stabilize the center section of the neckstrap, I inserted a length of 18 gauge wire, twisting the ends into simple loops, which I secured in the beadwork. To connect the sides, I made 5 passes through the center piece with 10-pound Fireline. I wanted the neckstrap to maintain this shape when I added the pendant portion of the focal.

Beth and Evie included a beautiful sterling silver toggle clasp which was perfect with the vivid yellows and oranges in the pendant.

Silver is also a fresh look with the  yellow-gold seed beads and orange-red stones in the earrings. These pieces are sure to put some sizzle in my fall wardrobe!

In his 7-minute video, Ben Ames, graduate student in quantum optics, explained life’s little mystery of the flame. I am so glad Beth and Evie McCord explored it even further and transformed its power into art! Take a minute now to head over to the EB Bead and Metalworks blog to see what they did with my bead soup! Then click here to go to our hostess, Lori Anderson's blog, for links to all the Second Reveal participants (scroll half-way down the page.)

As always, Lori, the biggest thanks to you for encouraging our creativity and organizing all 400 of us into this year's Bead Soup Blog Party. Fire element finished, I'm diving into the water focal next!