When, and how, did YOU start beading?

I have a little box of beads from Woolworths when I was 10, bright wooden
beads strung on tennis gut from the 70's, my mother's button jar and many,
many paperweights. Used to have a marble collection as
well until my "friend" organised a competition and cleaned me out.I
was 12.

In other words I like bright shiny things. The real bead addiction kicked
in when I went to London and found a bead shop. Wow!! New Zealand did
not have many bead shops then. We do now but they are expensive and at
least a good drive away.

I had gone shopping for a friend in London but bought lots of goodies.
Then I discovered French beaded flowers. I now own many beaded flower
books, subscribe to Bead and Button, Beadwork and Bead Unique.

I managed a trip to Milwaukee this year and had a wonderful time going to
lessons, buying beads and talking to other beaders.

I still work full time but my head buzzes with ideas and I sell through
three galleries. I also grow lavenders for oil and dried rubbings as well
as coach Badminton.

I have a few more years teaching to go plus lots to do in spare time.

This group is great and I always remember Sooz being so encouraging when I
first posted.

Cheers, Jan

I started in 1985 or so, I was down to my last $50.00 and my
unemployment had run out. I guess I just got tired of trying to get
somebody else to give me a job so I spent the dough on beads and thin
macrame chord, sold all I did with them for double and so on until I
had a real business. It took patience on the part of my family to get
through that first bit though! People were mostly nice and supportive
with helping me find places to sell my work too. I have only had to
work for an employer for two years since then, been self employed with
beads or computer graphic art all these years.

It was my mom who helped me figure out bead weaving a few years later,
I remember looking at the directions and my eyes just crossed! My mom
was quilting at the time mostly but she decided to try the brick stitch
directions, then taught me. She made a beaded curtain when I was a kid
in the 70s and I went shopping for the beads with her, that was fun and
I remeber those beads well today! Maybe that was the real start of it
all?

Ingrid
http://www.mermaidscove.com

I started beading in 1990. My hobby at that time was photography. I had
been working as a floral designer when I came down with Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (none of the doctors knew what it was) and was on disability
for awhile because I couldn't walk. I decided I needed something
artistic to do that I could work on when I felt well and not work on
when I had to stay in bed. About this time I got an invitation to do an
art fair with my photography. I did several art fairs, beads were just
starting to appear in my area, there was one bead store near us. I
bought some beads to make earrings while I was in my booth waiting for
people to buy my photography. People started to buy my earrings instead
and I took the money I made from that and started a jewelry design
business. I started attending bead society meetings and made several
good friends who are also beaders. I've gone to many large bead shows -
Bead & Button and the Gathering (International Society of Glass
Beadmakers) with my bead sisters.
In 1995 I saw dichroic glass for the first time and went out to the
Embellishment show (old name for Bead and Button) in Portland, OR to
take a class with Donna Milliron. I saved up and bought a kiln and
added fused dichroic glass to my repetoire.
I tend to do intricate strung designs (I hate the term "simple
stringing") using semiprecious beads and dichroic glass. I prefer to
make my own patterns rather than bead weaving. I do art/craft shows.
I work part time at our local library and teach beading at some of the
nine libraries we have in our system.
Since I live close to NYC, I am able to shop in the bead districts in
the city, which is great fun.
Patti
www.pattiwhiteley.com

I always had beads when I was a kid. I remember going to Ben Franklin
Crafts with my mother and buying little bags of those plastic
"blackberry" beads, star beads, and pony beads. I'd make myself
necklaces and bracelets.

When I was a teenager, I made necklaces for my sister's friends. I'd
braid very fine braids out of strands of jute, sew them into circles,
and embellish the circles with seed beads.

I got into beadweaving when I was about 20, I think. My mother had
bought me a copy of Bead and Button, and I'd bought myself a book on
beading techniques from the discount table at waldenbooks. while
looking at an amulet bag, I thought "I wish I could make something like
that", and then stopped and said "wait, why COULDN'T I make that?"

so I learned beadweaving, and it quickly developed into an obession.
Before I started beadweaving I'd always been crocheting or sewing or
knitting something, and I think that helped..I already had the patience
that it required, as well as the ability to be comfortable with a
needle and thread.

-Amber.

Dr. Sooz wrote:
How long have you been beading -- when did you start? And how'd that
disease creep into *your* hapless veins?

I know this Q has been done here before, but there are new people here.
So I thought it would be lovely if we all answered. It's a great way
to get to know each other better.

I'll step aside for now, and let someone else answer first. Then I'll
tell my story. Ready, Set ---Go!


hehe I love you Sooz!!!

I had to sit and think about this one! Back in the early 80's I was
young and dumb and living in Austin Texas with a jeweler (he was a
master jeweler but cocaine was sidetracking both of us). Anyway... I was
around the shop a lot and learned about lost wax casting and wax
carving/molding/modeling, primarily in silver. A friend of ours at the
shop gave me a bag of small fw pearls and showed me how to properly
string them so that I could pick up repair work when it came in. I still
have the double strand bracelet I made from them.

Not long after that I started making some long, busy earrings (very
80's!) and selling to friends. I changed course for awhile and started
making beautiful half and full masks with leather, suede, beads,
feathers and sterling charms. My ex SIL still has one I made for her
that covered most of her head in pink feathers and beads! She wanted to
be a pink flamingo for halloween... so she colored her hair pink, wore a
pink teddy, a pink boa, pink fishnet stockings and pink stilletos. LOl
What can I say... it was the 80's!!!

Drug recovery got me out of Austin Texas a couple of years later and
though I still worked on different things (restoring old furniture and
reusing found objects mostly) I didn't 'find' beads again until I moved
to Tahoe in 1997 and discovered a wonderful little bead store and *that*
was all she wrote!!! It was like riding a bicycle... and finding an old
friend!

Oddly enough I have never lost my desire, yearning, what ever you wanna
call it, to work with silver. To take silver and cast, hammer, twist,
file, saw... to create beautiful things. I was in awe of it then and
still am!


--
Polly
--
don't spook my groove...

email - webmaster at beadfulheart dot com
yahoo id - aoncridhe

I started out as a cloth doll artist, and then, around '97,
I started adding beaded embellishments to my dolls.
That got me "hooked" on beads, but I didn't know what
I could do with them.....then I bought a beading magazine
at a bead store, and the whole world of beads opened up!

[My website details some of this: www.beadsbysuzy.com]

I also found RCB (I have no idea when), and that has kept me
knee deep in beads, for sure!!! :-)

But then that Evil One (Sooz, you know who you are g)
told me about "altered books", and I went running off in
that direction! LOL! So now I do a bit of everything: fabric
art, collage, beads, and wire. I have to call myself a "Mixed
Media Artist" now! g Although fabric is my first love in
art (and my fall-back medium), I love experimenting with
just about everything!

RCB still rocks, and always keeps my imagination stirred up!
Love you guys!!!!!!!!!




--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

My mom and grandmom had always been into sewing and crafts, and I was taught
to sew, to crochet, to glue, to cut - it all "took" but knitting I was never
able to do. I also loved to do art, and initially went to college to get a
degree in commercial art. I made all A's & B's in my classes, but the
department chair told me I had no talent AND I BELIEVED HIM. So I changed
majors, and went back into crafts, such as cross stitch, embroidery and
needlepoint. Later I started taking art classes at the local library with a
great teacher (although she really liked my little kids stuff the best LOL -
I took them to class with me.) One of the crafts my mom did was those long
crocheted necklaces with metallic thread and plastic beads, but I never
could get the hang of it. My daughter started her own little bead business
when she was about 12 making necklaces and bracelets and selling them to her
friends. I made her a spreadsheet to keep up with her earnings - but the
bead bug hadn't bit me yet.

When I married my DH, he already had a side business making wooden jewelry -
and we shared an interest in gems and shiney things - but he could actually
MAKE them - so we began a partnership, I'd string 'em, and he'd do all the
findings work. He also made poly clay beads that I would incorporate in bead
kits and jewelry. This started about 1997. We bought so much stuff at bead
and gem shows that it became obvious we'd never be able to utilize it all -
so we started selling our excess inventory plus jewelry we'd make.

I wasn't sure I could continue without him, but I just have too many beads
not to! LOL And of course the friends I've made here have become essential
to my recovery and well-being.

Hugs, Karleen
Member International Jewelry Designers Guild (IJDG)
Vibrant Jewels: http://www.vibrantjewels.com/jewelry/welcome.htm
JustBeads: http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=21770
Join our Yahoo Group:

Jan G wrote:
I have a little box of beads from Woolworths when I was 10, bright wooden
beads strung on tennis gut from the 70's, my mother's button jar and many,
many paperweights. Used to have a marble collection as
well until my "friend" organised a competition and cleaned me out.I
was 12.

In other words I like bright shiny things. The real bead addiction kicked
in when I went to London and found a bead shop. Wow!! New Zealand did
not have many bead shops then. We do now but they are expensive and at
least a good drive away.

I had gone shopping for a friend in London but bought lots of goodies.
Then I discovered French beaded flowers. I now own many beaded flower
books, subscribe to Bead and Button, Beadwork and Bead Unique.

I managed a trip to Milwaukee this year and had a wonderful time going to
lessons, buying beads and talking to other beaders.

I still work full time but my head buzzes with ideas and I sell through
three galleries. I also grow lavenders for oil and dried rubbings as well
as coach Badminton.

I have a few more years teaching to go plus lots to do in spare time.

This group is great and I always remember Sooz being so encouraging when I
first posted.

Cheers, Jan

That lavender oil is really something! I still have half the bottle you
sent me... I use it all the time, it's a lifesaver when it comes to
burns, and it works *miracles* when it comes to headaches and stress.

Dr. Sooz wrote:
How long have you been beading -- when did you start? And how'd that
disease creep into *your* hapless veins?

I know this Q has been done here before, but there are new people here.
So I thought it would be lovely if we all answered. It's a great way
to get to know each other better.

I'll step aside for now, and let someone else answer first. Then I'll
tell my story. Ready, Set ---Go!


I have a "seminal bead" story, which in a symbolic way marks the
beginning of my bead obsession. Other than this, there's no demarcation
for the entry of beads into my life, because my mom and my sisters
always had beads and bead looms around the house.

There was this moment, though, when I was maybe six or seven, and a
cobalt-blue, perfectly round ceramic bead about 1/2" in diameter strayed
into my life. It was on the slag heap behind the ceramics studio at the
Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, where both my mom and my teenage
sister were taking classes. I remember it as rolling from the pile and
stopping in front of my feet; whether that really happened or it is the
embellishment of a child's magical fancy, I don't know. I do know that
the bead was instantly perceived by me as an amulet, a thing with a
VOICE. I picked it up and put it in my pocket... later I remember asking
if I could keep it. I was told that I could keep anything from the slag
heap.


That bead lived with me, in my pockets, for years. I have no idea
whatever became of it, because it's long gone, but the memory of it
shapes how I handle all beads... not as ingredients to a finished piece,
but as individual stories. From then on, grown-ups knew I loved beads...
they would take me to bead stores, or bring me a single lovely bead as a
gift. It was many years before I would ever make a piece of jewelry, and
the first ones were exceedingly simple, rudimentary bits strung on
sewing thread... I've become a lot more sophisticated in my stringing
techniques, but even now the strongest allure beads have for me is as
individuals.

C'mere little pretty, tell me your story...

Dr. Sooz wrote:
How long have you been beading -- when did you start? And how'd that
disease creep into *your* hapless veins?

I was in Camp fire girls and had to make a headband on a loom for my
indian uniform. I remember it was so hard trying to get them beads
inbetween those darn strings.... But I remember I loved the fact that I was
able to do it and it looked really great to an 11 year old.

Well, about a year ago I happened upon a bead store... All those colors! I
found a loom and decided to make my husband a hatband. I bought it and went
home and have been happily beading ever since. I actually showed a friend
how to use the loom and the next time I saw her she showed me a hummingbird
she had made out of beads! The student had surpassed the teacher. She
showed me how to do that and I have done one since then. Then she got into
Amulet bags and now I am doing those as well. I just love working with all
the colors and the Peyote stitch. I am the worlds most unpatient person but
somehow I love beading. Who would of thunk it!
...........Windy