Fairy Tale Bead Soup: Jenni's Secret Garden

"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful." ~Abram L. Urban

I have the worst luck with flowers.

I buy the most expensive hanging baskets from Lensmire's each summer and as soon as I take them out of the greenhouse they seem to deflate just a little, as if they know what fate awaits them on my front porch.

This year I picked out two beautiful hanging baskets. One with New Guinea impatiens with their large hardy blooms in the cheeriest shade of bubblegum pink with stripes of red and a double impatien that looks like tiny red roses surrounded by these fluffy white bitty blooms.

I put them in the wrought iron hangers on my back porch so that I could see them when I looked out side the back door. But the wind came and battered them around quite a bit in the past week. And the sun is much hotter back there for a much longer time (I thought this was a shady spot! Well, it is when I come home around 5:30-7:00!). I have moved them to a shadier part of the house, but I feel sad, because they look as though I have abandoned and abused them, when I have been lovingly tending to them, watering them, and even fertilizing them.

I wish that I had something other than a black thumb.

I admire lush gardens. I love to see a profusion of blooms as if floral fireworks have exploded showering down petals of every hue. I love the idea of a secret garden, with a creaky old gate that has ivy almost completely obscuring the entrance twining all around. You would jiggle the key that fits in the lock and when you pushed the heavy gate open you would spy the most extraordinary sights and smell the most incredible scents. It would be a feast for your senses.

For the Fairy Tale bead soup swap I gladly volunteered to be paired up with a new international friend. I was lucky to swap with Jenni Connolly of Jenni Bead from all the way Down Under. Since I won't likely get to travel there, this is the next best thing!

Jenni sent me a very pretty palette of purple, chartreuse and lavender. There were lampwork glass beads with confetti colors, bright green faceted glass rondelles, really cool ribbed glass beads (that I saved for another day) and some lilac colored lucite petals.

From my own stash I found some antique silver floral filigree that I layered with the lucite petals and a perfect glass headpin with the same purple and green palette from the immensely talented Kelley Wenzel of KelleysBeads.

To that I added stacked silver toned bead caps and daisy spacers along with a pewter skeleton key from Lynn Davis. I love what Lynn does. I sent her the original of this key and a few other pieces back last year and challenged Lynn to work her magic and create pewter castings of these items. I still have the original, but I love that I can keep using this piece through Lynn's ingenuity.

The result is a very fresh and springy look that is a departure from the color palettes that I usually gravitate to. I call this "Jenni's Secret Garden" in honor of my new friend Jenni.