I've always been interested in adornment.  As a preteen, I'd walk around with a steno pad always nearby so that, as they occurred to me, I could sketch my ideas for clothing.  Then began an artistic drought in my life that lasted until my mid-30's when a therapist told me to go do something artistic.  Like, maybe, how about a ceramics class, she said.  So I took a ceramics class, expecting little.  But I was wrong.  I loved working with clay and spent the next 2 or 3 years playing in the mud.  Then the drought began again while I worked as a stockbroker and a brokerage firm branch manager.  One day I bought a watch with a beautiful face but a nasty, tasteless, beaded band.  I went to a bead store to find new beads for the watchband, and it was, for me, a big glass of artistic water after a long drought.  I began making jewelry.  A year or so later I formed my own jewelry business—Beadjoux --  and never looked back.

I have an endless curiosity about people and the directions of life and the forces that drive us.  I like complicated things with depth and texture.  Quick and dirty doesn't do it for me—I want the long version.  My work has lots of color and texture.  I often combine materials—both to accomplish a structure, as well as to make a point.  I love beads in all their sizes, colors, materials—especially glass beads.    I love how they look with other materials, the texture they create when I use different sizes, and finishes

While I have worked with beads since 1994, working with seed beads is relatively new for me.  Seed beads can help me go places I can't go with larger beads.  My seed bead pieces reflect the numerous phases of my life.  They speak to the darkness in the past and the playful giddiness of self-expression now.  My pieces are about breaking out of confinement.  They are about freeing myself from structures imposed upon me by others.  They celebrate the opening of my life from the solitary coldness to the warmth of growth and transformation. 

My jewelry pieces go from girls just want to have fun to wearing your heart around your neck.  I love to design custom jewelry, working with a specific person's individuality and fantasy, filtered through my point of view.

Links

www.shelleybond.com