Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Bag of Beads Challenge 2010

It's that time of year again, when those members of the Toronto Bead Society who choose to participate pick up their Bag of Beads and start designing...something.

This year is my 3rd year taking part in the BOB Challenge and I have to say, the colours are the best I've seen so far. Turquoise, copper and purple - quite lovely! The collection of beads is quite diverse and always contains a couple of "challenge" item - something that doesn't have a hole and is not a bead. This year, there are two of them - a piece of textured paper and a copper pipe end, to be exact!! Now I know you can make beads out of paper but that seems a little too obvious to me, so I'm going to have to put my thinking cap on.

The only rule is that we have to use at least one of everything. The good news is, we can also add anything we want, so that helps a lot!

Here's a couple of photos to whet your appetite:

First, the paper - one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet with a beautiful texture and a soft brown colour. Sadly, I know next to nothing about specialty papers so can't tell you anything more about it. Is it Japanese? Quite possibly. On our supply list, it just says "paper", which really doesn't do it justice!

Here's a picture of all the beads we got, 14 different ones in total:

and a close up of the copper pipe end (which has the initials "EPC" stamped on it) and the single 18mm firepolished amethyst bead.

Luckily, I already have a few ideas in mind of what I can do with these beads and how I can combine them with a couple of other projects I have on the go but for now, mum's the word as the big reveal doesn't take place until the March meeting of the Bead Society. Stay tuned!

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