Likely, most of you know what ‘bead soup’ is, but for those who don’t here’s a quick explanation.
Bead Soup is a mixture of small beads either in a single color way, for instance pale pink to dark red, or a collection of small beads in complimentary colors. Bead Soup is used for creating free form items. It’s also a great way to occupy younger fingers that want to help. Just hand them the soup and ask them to sort.
I think that’s how I got my start loving things small, and pierced. My grandmother would hand me a pill bottle full of seed beads. The beads she gave me had belonged to my great grandmother, and they were extremely soupy. She’d give me a place to work at the table while she and my mom created their latest craft.
I can remember sorting seed beads by the hour as they glued dried beans to a board cut out to resemble a rooster, or mix resin to make trivets (and everyone within a 20′ radius high from the fumes). It delighted me to be able to sit at the table with them doing such an important task.
Every time a new craft would come out, I’d be offered a pill bottle of beads to sort. It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I realized just what a clever woman my grandmother was. The bottomless bowl of Bead Soup she gave me to sort were actually the same beads. She’d wait until I went to bed, or school, or outside to play, and she’d mix them together again.
I have those beads in my collection, and all the hanks of beads my great grandmother used in her business.
Yep, the bead business seems to run in the family, but that’s a story for another day!
*bead soup image found here. Go check it out, it was a very lucky find!
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