How did it all begin???
It all stemmed from a 2 day workshop in the UK based around basic jewellery making and wire work....I was hooked and fortunately for me there was a great little bead shop not far away in Chichester.
Jewellery didn't really take me. It was more sculptural stuff that I liked. So I would sit in our small lounge surrounded by a few pots of beads and bead away for hours making wired flowers and other things that we can picture as "mobiles" and big things on hula hoops ending in a solar eclipse....that was for a wedding centre piece.
Then I travelled further a field to Europe, swarovski found me! and then to Africa, wow! They know how to bead! and the journeys continued and so did the bead finding until we eventually arrived home in NZ. Only to find the prices of bead really rather extravagent.
So we set ourselves a little dream and set to making it happen. First I made dream catchers and sold them at market to make enough money to buy some wax sheets. Then we made rolled and dipped bees wax candles to sell at market to make enough money to buy some crystals. So then we strung crystals and sold them at market to make enough money to put in an order to buy some beads....yay!!! Yes it took a little while but it was worth it. I could now start making my own creations again....predominantly my bead & crystal rainbows on driftwood.
On a day out to Whitianga one day we found a cool looking treasure chest. It looked just perfect for the beads so we bought it. We filled it to the brim with a multitude of beads and took it market on Saturday. My god! You should have seen the queues. Totally gob smacking. That was back in 2004 and we haven't looked back since.
Since then we have been a regular on the Craft Circuit and Summer markets with our Combi and House Bus, both now sold. And now we have a website too. Much later than ever planned sorry folks. Took us a lot longer to find someone to put it together for us than we thought it would and then a whole lot longer to actually put it together than we thought it would.
So we have moved from the spare bedroom in our purple miners cottage to the sleep out of the purple cottage to a double garage at a bigger house 1km down the road to an 80msq shed 1hr down the road! And more recently we have downsized as we have relocated to Taranaki........it's good to be home again and see the mountain :0)
And during that time we were joined by our lovely daughter who just loves to help us count the beads....NOT! Playing yes.....and always with the smallest ones, hmmmmm. Keeps her amused at least. Only ever found a few in her nappies....LOL
And now the the next venture is to begin making our own......
I have all the kit these days for bead making and annealing and hope to set up again and start making more one offs and popular designs once our 2nd baby has arrived and once I have a really good air ventillation/extraction system in place. Untill then............I will just have to be patient!
So keep a look out to see what comes next.
Thanks for reading :-)
