Shop Feature! Cath Thomas of SamohtaC

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Cath wearing "The Leaf" - 3D Peyote Shapes and Diamond Weave Collar

You seem to have a real passion for beadweaving and bead embroidery. What first brought you to the world of beading?
My mother's good friend and art-therapist, Berthy Bijlard, introduced me to beads and cross-stitching when I was about 14 or so. I continued to do cross-stitching because it was easy to find that material. Only as an adult, I got comptelely hooked on beadweaving with seed beads and bead embroidery. That was in 2004, when I saw the beautiful Bead Dreams contest pieces. Before I even could buy beads, I drew my own "Dream piece", and searched the web to learn everything from the materials to all the techniques. Where I am living there was nobody doing this, no shops, no workshops, nothing. There was also no translation for these things in French either. Eventually, I learned the basics and evolved by learning to solve problems by myself.

Neytiri's - Scored 1st place in the FMG seed bead beading contest 2016 "Bib and collar style" category.

I understand you are a bit of an expert at Diamond Weave. You even wrote a book in collaboration with the inventor of the stitch. Is this your favorite stitch?
All stitches have their advantages and for that, I love them all. However, some please me more than others. If I had to choose only one stitch to bead with, I'd have a hard time chosing between Peyote stitch, my first & much loved stitch, and Diamond Weave. There is so much one can do with DW and still so much to discover with it.

What are your favorite subjects when designing your pieces? You seem to draw inspiration from both the natural and geometric worlds.
Mother Nature and Geometrics are indeed my main inspiration. My left brain is the control freak attraceted by geometrics and my right brain is a poet in love with nature's splendor and all living beings. I try to marry the two of them, which is much harder than you may think. I essentially want to speak with beads (because I like to tell stories) in a way that blends geometric and organic, like the flaming cuff Embers, or the leaf that can be seen in my necklace "The Leaf" created in negative space thanks to the little Trapezino bezels. I am also quite happy with my petal to pod creations, like Neytiri's and a piece made for a charity, the Jane Goodall Pendant. I also  like bead embroidery for it allows the use of a variety of non-beady materials which can also be very inspiring, like the images, metal stamps and perfume bottle used in "Seduction".

Embers Cuff - Partially Zipped All-Wing Bangle

What made you move on from beading to selling and finally teaching and tutorial writing?
In 2006, I subscribed to a francophone forum. It appeared that in the seed beads section there wasn't as much to learn as I hoped, but that I had knowledge to transmit. I was particularly active in the hints and tips section, which resulted in some beaders calling me the "MacGyver" of beading (LOL!). I didn't sell patterns back then, I just wrote simple tuts and shared them for free, which allowed me to learn how to use software to explain things. I wish that tutorials for tutorial writing had been available back then, but I developed my own style, which imho is not so bad. The first pattern that I wrote "for sale" in 2009 was in fact a complimentary pattern I sent to each person donating for charity when the Fukushima disaster happened. Only when I had to stop working for health reasons and my income dropped significantly, I decided to sell tuts to pay for beady supplies.

Mokuren - Scored 2nd in the Bead Mavens Vernal Visions Contest

 

 Your piece "Souls" is incredible (and I must admit, the tutorial is on my wish list!) You describe it as the most mindful pieces you've ever beaded; can you tell us a bit more?
Thank you! Souls is very special. It is an allegory of the walk of life or lives, and one of my first 'petal to pod' creations. I think that my left and right brain did a great job together. It tells the story of souls, which never die, but go through stages of development. I made pods with a rainbow of colors on the inside. A soul is in a body like a seed resides in a pod, and gets liberated when time has come. The colors are the chakras we have in us, like a rainbow, a stairway to heaven. Here and there a soul falls out of its pod, sometimes it is too much in the green or blue or red zone... Each color is of equivalent importance. To become enlightened, every step needs to be made, experienced. Therefor necklace has a very organic look, curling, moving, making tours and detours. The soul which has experienced everything and evolved to a miraculous level of consciousness has not one specific color, it has them all. Pure light is made of all colors, not none. The crystals at the far end of the necklace represent boddhisatvas, the enlightened.

And finally, on the inside of the necklace, there is a long 'diamond' (cupchain) path, that cannot always be seen. Things may sometimes seem to go awfully wrong, but whatever happens, wherever you are, the walk is paved with diamonds. They are not always visible, but they are there, all the way long, all the time, at every step. Because life is glorious. 

 

More details about Souls can be found here: http://samohtac.blogspot.ch/2013/06/rainbows-of-color.html

Also, there is a "Petal to Pod" group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PetalToPod/

Where do you prefer to do your beadwork?
Anywhere in a calm place, in a good chair with arm rests near a window, but not in the sun. I would love to bead outside, or in public, but my light sensitivity prevents me from doing that.

Tribute to Jane Goodall - A double-sided pendant / Sculpture / Toy - The doll's skirt protects the gorilla.

I understand that you blog about your beading adventures. Does writing about your beadwork help the creation process?
No, the creation process results in writing about it, in particular if it was a long or special work. I like to share my experience with other people who would like to learn about it as much as I like to read about the WIP of other beaders, like Marsha Wiest-Hines. This is how we can learn from one another despite the distance between us. It is also a way to tell people what they can do with what I teach in my tutorials if they take the step of exploring further and improvise.
 
What tips or advice can you share that has helped you lead such a successful beading career? I don't consider my beading activity as a career, but Maya Angelou said one day:

'Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.'

and maybe that is what makes my beading a successful journey.

 

Seduction - Finalist in the FMG seed bead beading contest 2016

 

Shop Feature! Sarah Cryer, The Indecisive Beader

Sarah Cryer, owner of Etsy shop “Sarah Cryer Beadwork” is a London-
based beadwork artist whose part-time passion for beadweaving has yielded big-time results.
A busy wife and mother of two, who also works secularly, Sarah uses her spare time to design
and create impressive geometric-shaped wearable art pieces. It is evident that her spare time,
is time well spent because she has won more than one Etsy Beadweavers challenge.
Sarah’s skill in 3D sculptural beading along with her love and excitement for beadweaving,
pushes her to produce high-quality, innovative designs. 

Whether you purchase a finished piece or a tutorial from her Etsy shop you know exactly what you are getting
because her item descriptions are thorough, her designs are precise and beautifully
photographed, and her tutorials are fully illustrated, detailed and clear.
Sarah was kind enough to do a Q&A, learn more about her work below.



Q. How long have you been beadweaving and how did you get started?
Sarah Cryer: I’ve been beadweaving for around 8 years - prior to that I was stringing and
playing with polymer clay, but then I discovered beadweaving and was hooked.

Q. What do you love about beadweaving?

Sarah Cryer: I love the variety of textures and forms I can make, the fact that I can work on a
tray on my lap (important in a busy house) and I find the act of beadweaving very therapeutic.
Most of all though I do really, really love the beads themselves - the shapes, the finishes, the
sparkle and just in the infinite, tiny variety!

Q. What moved you to become an Etsy seller and then a member of the
Etsy Beadweavers Team?

Sarah Cryer: When I first started selling it was on Folksy - a UK based handmade
marketplace. I still sell there, and do well with my finished pieces, but when I moved into
tutorials Etsy was the obvious choice with its digital download service and international reach. I
already knew about the EBWT as an author friend (Sophia Bennett) discovered you when she
was writing a young adults book about fashion and beading, and shared you on Facebook, and
I’d been watching member’s designs for a while.

Q. Which Etsy Beadweavers Team challenges have you won?

Sarah Cryer: I was joint winner of the first challenge I entered, only days after joining the team,
with my ‘Inspired by Chihuly’ Nasturtium Ring.
 

That was a big boost, and it’s still one of my favourite pieces - it almost beaded itself (although attempts to recreate in 11s instead of tiny 15s have since failed). Not long afterwards I won the ‘Abstract’ challenge with a large winged peyote bangle inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies  - that was more of a surprise as the piece itself was a bit of a battle and wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to - I had to challenge myself to let go and just see where it went. I’ve not had time to enter more than a few challenges since then as I’ve either been focusing on other projects or couldn’t
get pieces to work.

However earlier this year I won the Stitch and Craft Beads Butterfly Challenge Professional category with my ‘Semele’s Cuff’which was a huge honour and pleasure, and I’m pushing myself to enter their challenge again next year, and also a couple of other competitions - they
pull me out of my comfort zone, force me to work to the highest standards, and often result in
pieces suitable for tutorials which is great.

Q. You are a very busy working mom with a husband, how do you find time for
beadweaving?

Sarah Cryer: My house is very dusty - that probably accounts for some of the time! Seriously
though, when you have young children you don’t go out much, so the evenings we previously
spent going to the ballet or the opera, or enjoying drinks or meals out are but a distant memory.
I work three days a week, with two at home with the youngest boy, and also sing so usually
have at least one evening away at rehearsals. Once the boys are in bed though I can bead on
the sofa, or work on patterns and kits, and although I don’t spend as much time as I would like
on it, and can’t really teach or do fairs, it seems like a good balance for now. My 3-day a week
job is as an IT Business Analyst for a leading UK department store, so I get lots of transferrable
digital and more importantly shop-keeping and process efficiency skills from there which help.

I’ve learned a lot over the last few years about how to streamline the business side to free up
more time, and next month my youngest will be in pre-school three hours a day, so I’m planning
to spend one three-hour chunk on pretending to be domesticated, and the other on beading or
dressmaking (my other, rarely managed love).

Q. Why do you call yourself the indecisive beader?

Sarah Cryer: When I was starting to blog I didn’t have the confidence to use my own name as
the title, so I wanted to come up with an interesting pseudonym. I’m hopeless at getting on with
a project - I can easily spend days just choosing the beads, starting, stopping, unpicking, pulling
more beads, and my husband jokes that I spend more time choosing beads than beading -
hence the name. At the moment I’m even worse than usual - I’m going through a period of
experimentation with new techniques and have a horrible desire for perfection (born of pre-
Christmas tiredness) which means that the three pieces I’m trying to do are all spending more
time having new sets of beads pulled or being completely re-worked, than they are on being
beaded.

Q. How would you describe the type of jewelry you make?

Sarah Cryer: Bold but hopefully wearable, using a mix of off-loom techniques and beads.
Colour is incredibly important to me - I discovered the work of Kaffe Fassett in my teens and
have been working with bold, bonkers colours ever since - back then in patchwork, knitting and
needlepoint, and now in beads (which are even more fun as you have finish and shape as well
as colour to play with). I tend to tone that down a bit for my materials packs and finished pieces
that are for sale because not everyone shares my taste, but the pieces I make for myself do
tend to push the colour palette almost to the unwearable! I use Miyuki seeds and delicas, and
lots of Czech beads, although I’m largely resisting the shaped bead revolution for now, and I do
love crystals, although I tend to use them sparingly. My go to stitches are peyote and RAW,
plus that weird mix of netting & embellishment that so many use to build 3D structures - the
peyote is shaped, and comes from an early and continuing affinity with my friend Jean Power’s
amazing work, and the RAW and 3D work from Sabine Lippert and Marcia DeCoster - that
combination probably explains why my style is still a bit eclectic rather than focused, but I’m still
learning and enjoying the journey!

Q. What is your design process when creating/writing a tutorial?

Sarah Cryer: Only one of my current pieces was designed specifically as a tutorial, and that
was really an experiment to see if I could work in a focused way with that purpose in mind - I
managed it, but that one hasn’t sold well, and I think that is probably fair as it’s not as innovative
as my others, and I didn’t really enjoy the process. The successful tutorials such as the
Baroque Tape Measure Surround and Space Needle Case  were born
of pieces made as experiments in form, or technique, and often for competitions, where at some
point in the process or even years later I thought ‘yes, I could write this up, I think it might sell’.

As I don’t have lots of time I’m pretty strict now with what I do publish - the piece must be
individual rather than derivative, have been honed to provide the simplest technical beading
experience possible, and I need to be able to explain clearly in words and diagrams what I’ve
done. So that means at the moment that in my queue of ‘to write ups’ I’ve got several paused
because I can’t find a way to describe the 3D structure, another which is just too simple, and
another where the thread paths and order of steps needs some serious re-working before I’ll
consider publishing. So for now I’m concentrating on beading new work and hoping some of it
will end up being suitable - if it’s not, then I’ll still have some lovely beadwork at the end!

Q. What tips or advice can you share that has helped you run a successful Etsy
shop?

Sarah Cryer: Evolution not revolution - focus on the essentials at first and allow the peripherals
to evolve.
I would say the essentials are good product, very good photos to show how good your products
are, a simple look and feel, and engagement with your market. For me, a macro lense for our
SLR and a helpful patient husband sorted out the photography, to engage with customers I use
my blog www.theindecisivebeader.com and the associated Facebook page, and for good
product I have to rely on hard work and inspiration, and try to resist the temptation to list
everything I finish. Everything else - the business cards, packaging, paid marketing, etc is
pointless without those three essentials as no one will buy anything - you can evolve those as
you go along, gently trying out different options as you have sales to try them on, only then will
you understand how well you and your processes work. And I’ve probably also evolved to focus
my limited time on the things that sell - I’d love that to be finished work, but it’s not, it’s tutorials
and kits.

Q. What other ways do you market your finished pieces and tutorials?

Sarah Cryer: I mainly use my blog www.theindecisivebeader.com and Facebook page
www.facebook.com/theindecisivebeader/ . They cover my whole beading life - so everything I’m
making, including reviews of other beaders patterns & books, failures, UFOs, sewing, and life in
general rather than just being about the commercial side, which I hope makes them more
engaging for customers and friends. I also seem to get good conversions from the Etsy shop
updates feature, and good traffic through from Pinterest (SarahBeady) where I am a devoted
pinner of gorgeous pieces from other beaders (I try and remember to sneak in the odd pin of my
stuff and it seems to work). I’m also very lucky to have made friends, both in the flesh and
digitally, with some wonderful beaders both in London and across the world, and their support
on social media in particular has been hugely instrumental in getting some of my key pieces to a
wider audience, as well as being a lovely experience. Realistically though, that following is
largely composed of beaders, so whilst it works well for tutorials and kits, I’ve still not found a
really successful method for marketing finished work - I’d be interested in ideas and tips there!

Q. Have you made use of the EBW Instagram page?

Sarah Cryer: I’m very new to Instagram as The Indecisive Beader (a matter of weeks) so I’m
still feeling my way around a bit, but you’ll see me there soon!
Sarah Cryer may be “The Indecisive Beader”, but she is also proof that “it’s not how much time
you have to bead that matters, it's how you use the time you have to bead that makes the
difference”.

Interview with November 2016 Challenge Winner Évi Csizmadia Lajosné of Vicus

Évi Csizmadia Lajosné of Vicus is the winner of both the public and team votes for the November 2016 Challenge 'November Guest'

Check out all the fantastic entries! 

Check out Évi's shop!

What initially attracted you to beads as a medium?
Several years ago, I was about 8-9 years old when I began to explore the world of beads.

And, more specifically, how was your imagination drawn to bead weaving?
At the time, cross stitch embroideries were being made. It was a favorite magazine subject, where I saw at first bead jewelry making. I really liked one design and thought that I could make it. The first attempt was very well done and then on I liked the world of beads.

What was your route to becoming an artist?
I began simpler pieces, I always made jewelry that was complex and time-consuming. I learned on the Internet, bought samples, attended forums. I was looking for beaded groups on the Internet. I learned a lot, including new techniques.



Tell us a bit about your favorite techniques.

A new technique suddenly appeared in the bead embroidery magazine I read. I loved it, I knew right away that this is my thing. Hatvani Annie was the first one who displayed embroidered bead jewelry. His knowledge about using more about the bead embroidery spoke to me.
Using the Internet has opened the world of beading to me. I recognized all over the world various bead artists. I saw fantastic jewelry. Both inspired me to create my jewelry that is similar, but according to their my own plans.

Do you design the piece before starting? If not, what prep work do you do?
A small piece of jewelry does not always need a plan in advance. For a ring, pendant or something less, in the central part, I choose and find out on the fly how to include more beads. The bracelets and necklaces are planned more in advance, drawn on paper.

What currently inspires you?
I enjoy the diversity of new beads which have coming out lately. I love to try them. They offer a lot of new possibilities. But my big love is Swarovski stones and gemstones. I make a lot of jewelry that combines the two.

Who have been your major influences, and why?
Nowadays there are Russian artists with pieces that have a great impact on me.
I love it when my jewelry can be worn either in formal settings or on weekdays as well. I love the elegant, unique jewelry, or what was once seen that unique. I love it when the owner of the jewelry turns even more beautiful thanks to my pieces

What is your favorite thing about working with beads?

Not so long ago since I made pattern samples. A request was made at first by a beading magazine. There are also simpler designs that even beginners can feel free to make, but I make more complicated, more complex samples. The ease of patterns and beauty of the jewelry are equally important.

Shop Feature Elizabeth Scarborough of Scarboro

Meet Elizabeth Scarborough who opened her Etsy Shop “scarboro” in 2011.  She is a skillful bead artist, a professional writer of science fiction and fantasy novels for over 30 years, and an avid reader.  Elizabeth is also a lover of cultural and historical places, themes, and art.  She infuses all of these talents and qualities into her beadwork to produce one-of-a-kind show stopping jewelry.   Her opulent use of color and keen attention to detail as seen in her embroidered bib “In Living Color” makes it obvious that when it comes to her art, she holds nothing back and puts her heart into all of her pieces.  

Elizabeth shares the inspiration behind each piece in the item description section of her listings.  As you read the description you feel as though you have been personally invited into her world.  When you purchase one of her pieces you become the proud owner of a beautiful and thoughtfully crafted piece of art that inspires you to dream big.

How long have you been beading and how did you get started?
I have been beading off and on most of my life.  My grandmother, who at one time had a beading business (moccasins and purses with little beaded designs on them), gave me beads to play with when I visited her.

What moved you to become a member of the Etsy Beadweavers Team?
When I started posting on FB and saw posts with gorgeous beaded jewelry, I wanted to find out who made it and be one of them.

What other ways do you market your jewelry?
I show off everything I make in FB posts and occasionally get commissions that way.

How would you describe the type of jewelry you make and who is your customer?
I do a lot of jewelry based on stories, folklore, fairytales, holidays, or because of the
Etsy Beadweaver Challenges.  

My customers are often fans who admire something I'm wearing or want a gift for someone with a particular interest.  I've made lots of Egyptian inspired pieces for one friend who loves Egyptology. I love Halloween and so do many of my friends so I've made lots of Halloween and Days of the Dead pieces, but they are generally too cheerful to be properly Goth.

The thing I want most in a customer is an appreciation of color.  One lady asked me to re-do a piece I'd done for an Etsy challenge in black and I just couldn't get interested.  I find little black dresses with dainty gold minimalist jewelry quite sedating.

Do you blog, or participate in social media?

I have blogged at times but it's related to writing, which has been my profession since 1980. Currently my website containing my beadwork is undergoing re-vamping but most of the recent work is among the photos on my FB page.

What inspired or motivated you to express your love of storytelling through your jewelry?
When I saw Suzanne Cooper's first books of patterns and all of the pictorial peyote patterns she designed, I knew that was the kind of beading I wanted to do. Pictorial peyote, either flat or tubular, let me paint with beads and tell stories with humor, which is what I usually do when I write.

I love funny.  I love fairytales.  A friend wanted a piece to wear on a cruise to the Antarctic for formal dance nights onboard ship so I designed "Fred and Ginger" the penguins dancing beak to beak. Since I was doing tubular peyote at the time, the back depicted their penguin butler Jeeves bringing fish on a platter.

Pretty soon I wanted to do a book like Suzanne's of colored bead patterns. There were very few available at that particular time. Previously the patterns had been mostly black, white and greyscale symbols drawn on graph paper. People just chose their own colors. So I wanted to show my patterns in colors and with the help of Suzanne and the people who owned the beading program I was using, I created a book of funny fairytale pictures.  Friends helped me bead the designs and photograph the finished pieces.

After a while, I got tired of everything being flat, and started making bead-embroidered pieces.  At first I just beaded around cabs, using the colors in the cab to embellish it, but gradually I saw how bead embroidery could also tell stories, though in a more abstract way.

What is pictorial peyote?
Pictorial peyote is just that--peyote beaded pictures.  Some people use a special part of their bead program to copy pictures from photos or older paintings. I like to draw mine freehand. They're not fine art, but they do tell the story and sometimes make me (and the viewer, I hope) laugh.  In illustrating The Frog Prince, on one side of the bag I drew the frog with the crown and the lipstick print kiss that transforms him on the other side of the bag into The Frogman Prince in wet suit, goggles, and flippers dripping all over the palace's red carpets.


What is your design process when creating a new piece?
For pictorial peyote, I design the pattern with Bead Tool, assemble the Delicas I want to use by sight, not by number, and start beading.

For bead embroidery and other techniques, my process is kind of like jazz.  I find a focal or a color that fits the mood, pile every single bead and cab or whatever I think might work together on top of my bead desk, and start playing.  I sometimes try to draw the pattern out ahead of time, but that rarely works out for me as I keep changing my mind, and the pattern. The two main things that take time in making a piece for me are getting the right beads together and then finding all the stuff I know I have seen recently--in fact, they are often what inspired the piece--but can't locate when I want to use them.  Usually, my designs are most influenced by color and by the beads and focals themselves.

Your love of color is evident in all of your spectacular pieces such as the “Moulin Rouge” necklace. When choosing your color palette do you use a color wheel or do rely on your well-trained eye?
I learned how to use a color wheel in art classes years ago but I rely on my own color sense for the most part, as it tends to be unconventional.  My color schemes are based on things like the sacred colors of different cultures, colors that appear in a focal, or the favorite colors of an outfit or a holiday of the person I'm making the piece for.  Right now I'm making a bracelet in a very pale pastel pink for a friend who wants it to go with a dress.  It would never be my first choice but the truth is, I like almost any color.  It's how you use it that makes it work. 

How did seven of your pieces get featured in Margie Deebs book “The Beader’s Color Palette”?
Margie is a designer friend from way back and she's acquainted with my work. When she needed pieces to illustrate certain topics in her book, she asked me for pieces of mine she'd seen online.


What is it about tribal, ethnic, and historical stories and designs that inspire you?
I live and breathe stories. I sing story songs, read constantly, write books, watch stories on films and TV.  I find it fascinating how the same themes are represented in different cultures and places in the world as well as at different periods in time.  My degree is in history mostly because my main professor was a wonderful storyteller.

You often showcase the work of other artist in your pieces, why is this important to you?
I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and I'm often inspired by certain focal cabs or beads, so credit is often due!


What has been the most challenging part of owning an Etsy shop and what has been the most rewarding?
To tell you the truth, the shop is mostly a place to display work I haven't yet sold or gifted or decided to keep for myself.  I don't fuss much with technical embellishment as I prefer to do my embellishing in the actual beadwork. The most rewarding part is selling one of those pieces.

What tips or advice about running a successful shop would you like to share?
Show off what you make in other places with a hint if not a direct link to where it can be examined more closely and/or purchased.  Get photos that are as clear as you can make them and provide descriptions that are evocative of your inspiration but also give details like measurements.

Please visit the following links to learn more about Etsy Shop “scarboro” and it’s owner Elizabeth Scarborough:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/scarboro?ref=pr_shop_more
www.facebook.com/elizabeth.a.scarborough
My authorial website is: scarbor9.wixsite.com/beadtime-stories
Elizabeth thank you so much for sharing with us, you have personally inspired me to go big and go bold.  Elizabeth Scarborough of the Etsy Shop “Scarboro” is proof that when you do what you love – it shows!

July Challenge Winner Interview: Svetoslava Todorova- LuckyDesignCrafts

Svetoslava Todorova is the winner of the July Challenge 'Mystical, Mythical and Magical Creatures'. We asked her to tell us a bit about herself.

See all the beautiful original submissions!

Check out Svetoslava's Shop

First of all I would like to express my gratitude to all Team members for being so kind with me and to beg for forgiveness - English is not my native and if there is something unusual, please be lenient.
I've been born in ancient town Plovdiv - the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe.
Plovdiv is a beautiful small town in central Bulgaria. Its unusual very eventful history has left many valuable architectural monuments - Ancient Theatre, Roman Stadium, the Renaissance complex "Old Town" etc.
 
I love my hometown and where do I lived in the world, I always go back with love and warm memories of this little romantic place under the sun - home to many artists, musicians, writers ...
Now I'm living in London with my beloved family.
I finished my education with two master's degrees - Master of Music in Pedagogy and Performance - Classical piano.
 
Although I no longer practice my profession as a musician, for me the classical music will remain forever a fundamental and very important part of my life. I can't do anything without music - whether working or resting, there is always music. Very often through music I manage to visualize my ideas.

Long, long ago, as a child in the home of my grandmother I found an antique beaded bracelet, belonged to one of my ancestors. The bracelet was in poor condition and my grandmother told me that was made sometime in the 18th century. That was my first encounter with beads. But it all started decades later.
 
One day, three years ago, surfing the net, I came across a very beautiful necklace of beads. The author was Albena Petkova. Now I know that it is one of the most prominent masters, but then for me it was a miracle. So I started to follow the work of the beadweaving artists .
Actually I started working with beads at the beginning of this year. The start, of course was hard - did not know and could not anything. But it was so interesting and curious how a pile of beads can be obtained such amazing things. That is all. My curiosity turned into love, love has become a passion.
For me, as for every artist the greatest challenge is his latest work. I am a huge lover of Fine art. Currently I try to reproduce series of necklaces, borrowed from the paintings of Renaissance artists.
The challenge here is that a different material must achieve a similar effect. The exceptional skill of old masters in working with shade and their approach to detail for me has always been something special and difficult, because the paint must be replaced with beads.
The are three artists with very special part in my heart: Albena Petkova, Joanne Zammit and Nadia Gerber. Three different artists, three different styles, emotions, approaches to the material.
Lately I'm trying to build my own online shop: luckydesign.co.uk/, but it is not finished yet.
 
Warm hugs to all

Svetoslava/Sveti/