We're a mother-daughter partnership that began in 2003.  My mom, Verna, was the first one to begin doing beadwork several years ago, and after a few lessons, I was hooked, too.  Pretty soon, I'd developed a pretty serious lampwork buying habit, and really admired both the artistic talent and technical craftsmanship that it takes to create such tiny works of art.  So I signed the two of us up for a beginning beadmaking class.  Little did we know how much our lives were about to change!  We left our class armed with two hothead torches, a few rods of glass, some basic tools, and just enough knowledge to be dangerous!  Soon, we'd added more glass, bulk fuel tanks, and a kiln to our arsenal, and we were totally obsessed with melting glass.

After months of reading and studying, and hundreds of hours of painstaking practice, we were about to be buried under a mountain of our own beads. So we decided to take the plunge and turn our new found passion into a part-time business.  We began listing some of our beads for auction at JustBeads.com, and were totally amazed by how warmly we were welcomed as sellers by the community of bead lovers there. The encouragement and kindness shown to us by the clients we met there was overwhelming, and gave us the courage to continue to build  our budding business. Mother was retired when we began this journey, and I'm still employed as an office manager by day, but hope to eventually make our studio my full-time office.

But we've also got to give credit where it's due....none of this would have been possible without a lot of help from the men in our lives.  My 16 year old son, B.W., had to become self-sufficient at a very early age.  He learned pretty quickly that when I'm in the zone at my torch, I lose all sense of time.  So he learned to cook to keep from starving, learned to do laundry so he'd have clean socks to wear, and became one of those rare male creatures that can see when something needs to be done, and does it without having to be asked.  All of this without a word of complaint.  How lucky I am to have such a great kid! 

And my Dad, Nick, has stepped up to the plate to become our handyman, electrician, plumber, carpenter, fuel-guy, garbage man and number one cheerleader.  Without fail, he's willing to drop whatever he's doing and run to our aide, no matter what kind of minor emergency we happen to be having.  The support and encouragement we've been shown by our fellas has been invaluable to both Mother and I, and the success we've had would have been just a dream without them.

Our goals are simple....To make affordable, quality beads that give just as much joy to our clients who purchase them as they give to us during the creative process of making them.  We believe that beads should make people happy, and we take a lot of pride in the fact that many of our "babies" have become part of heirloom quality jewelry that will be around for generations to come.

Thank you for visiting us!