Labor Day 2009

September 6, 2009

Well, Labor Day is not until tomorrow and I hope everybody is celebrating, we sure are. Having friends later on and going on the lake on our pantoon boat, on a beautiful day.

People often ask me how did I get into the jewelry business, so here it is. I grew up in Athens, Greece and my mother liked jewelry and had a lot of it - the expensive kind gold, platinum, diamonds etc. As a kid I loved to go through her jewelry box and try things on. When I was a teenager, my mother gave me a costume necklace she had with beautiful bright beads. I did not like the way it was put together so I took it apart a strung it again in my own way. I liked the way it turned out, but I was sursprised to see that other people liked it too. That must have been the beginning of my passion with jewelry. From then on, I would go to the stores, find costume jewelry on sale, take them apart and re-string them until I liked them. It was an amazing "high" for me every time someone complimented what I had on.

Fast forward many years later and I am looking at an issue of Bead and Button magazine and I see this incredibly beautiful, complicated necklace that I wanted to have. I started reading the directions and it said "peyote" stitch, something I had never heard of before, so I headed to Borders and found a book called Creative Bead Weaving by Carol Wilcox Wells. This book became my bible, I taught myself the peyote stich and then, all the other stitches in the book and that began my passion for beadweaving.

Stay tuned
Perie