Responding to a Challenge

Over a month ago, I saw an invitation to join a challenge called the Bead Soup Double Up on Facebook. The idea is that you pull together a box of beads that includes a focal, seed beads, and anything else you choose to include, mail them off, and the organizer would pair you up with a fellow bead fanatic. I mean, enthusiast. You create something with the goodies you receive and post it to the group at the end of May.

Fresh off the joy of the 7000 Bracelets blog hop, I signed up. Had a blast putting together a box to send to my swap buddy, and was very excited when my box of goodies arrived in the mail (even though the ominous rattle inside the box warned me about the tube of seed beads that self-destructed en route).

And then life intervened, as it so often does. And the beads sat in their mailing box for over month.

So now I'm in a full on, throttle-wide-open panic to be creative in time for the deadline of May 30. Here's a teaser of how I've treated the focal....it's a very cool agate that came to me with lots of black and grey seed beads and other gemstones. Being the contrarian that I am, I picked up on the shades of blue and purple in the markings of the donut and encircled it with iolite and Czech glass.


Any guesses what I'll be doing with it from here? Especially given the fact that I only have a few days to complete the piece and a full time job away from the bead table?

I'm living on the edge, here, folks!!