Well, I'm Cate and I have been making beaded jewellery for the past eleven years. I started to learn to bead when I was on maternity leave - the only thing that kept the nausea at bay was sitting still and there's only so much television you can watch without going completely insane! My Mum taught me the basics and we've taken one hell of a journey together in the bead weaving world!
I started with the most basic of all basics - a peyote stitched amulet bag. It was horrible! However, the beads captured my imagination and I kept trying new combinations of colours and textures that I could make pretty yet simple bracelets. They were all variations of the same primitive theme, but they kept my fingers busy and kept me sane, whilst also providing rubbish presents for pretty much everyone around me!
After a few weeks I decided to see what else I could do with these gorgeous little sparkles and slowly learnt how to do brick stitch, netting, square stitch, herringbone, spiral rope and eventually I mastered right angle weave. I made hundreds of samples, learning all the permutations of these stitches that I could find. I drew blood with the needles, developed a nice line in thread-worn skin on my fingers and a taste for all things shiny!
Beading has kept me sane yet provided me with a new type of insanity. I have an autistic son so I rarely go out of an evening so creating beaded jewellery has kept me busy throughout those long nights before he learnt that sleeping was a good thing to do!
I have too many favourite bead artists but some of my very favourites include Jean Power, Gwen Fisher & Florence Turnour, Marcia DeCoster, Cindy Holsclaw and Sonoko Nozue (I couldn't find her website but Google her works, they are amazing!).
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