New Bead Soup - Almost all RECLAIMED!

Here is a new bead soup pulled together expressly to cover the new Lucite necklace base that just arrived on my doorstep a couple days ago. While pulling this soup together, I pulled as much as I could from reclaimed and second-hand sources. Here's a peek:

From left to right are the materials and the source for each:
- The bag of mixed silver metal beads was a thrift store find.
- 4 tubes of seed beads - only one of which was bought in a bead shop. The others were found at thrift stores or garage sales.
- A seed bead necklace and earrings (with the large silver beads) - bought as part of a lot of necklaces from eBay.
- The freshwater pearls (a necklace and stretchy bracelet) were found at a garage sale.
- 2 bags of seed beads, also found at a thrift store.

So, of all the items I intend to use in this piece, only one was purchased by me from an actual bead shop: the bronze metallic size 15/0 seed beads. While you can find tons of jewelry from which to salvage size 6/0 and size 11/0 seed beads and sometimes you can find size 8/0 seed beads, size 15/0 seed beads just don't show up very often, unfortunately.

Here are a few more shots of the bead soup:

I'm looking forward to getting to work on this new piece and super excited to be using mostly reclaimed and second-hand beads. I would love to hear about any projects in which you have used reclaimed materials - and is certainly doesn't have to be beadwork or jewelry. Please share your story in the comments and be sure to include links to photos or blog posts about those creations! I'd love to hear more about them... and you! :)