Teresita Ramos has always had a touch for handcrafts and an eye for jewelry.
So when a friend showed her how to fashion her own bracelets, earrings and necklaces
from beads and thread, beading instantly became her weekend and evening hobby.
When her husband died six months ago, it became her solace.
"It was really like therapy, my refuge," the bookkeeping assistant said.
"It helped me get through a difficult time."
Now, with her and her daughter's jewelry boxes overflowing, the 56-year-old
Ramos has turned beading into a money-making sideline. She exhibits her coral,
quartz and turquoise creations at church bazaars and holds Tupperware-style
jewelry parties at her Sweetwater home. "It sells well," she said. "I never
repeat the patterns, so each piece is personal. People like that."
A $1 billion-plus industry nationally, beading is blooming. New bead stores
are spurring more people to take it up as a hobby, one that often turns into a home-based business.
After a lull following the 1960s, when hippies made beads their signature accessory, beading has been
making a nationwide comeback since the early `90s. A big reason is that it's easy, said Alice Korach,
founding editor of the Wisconsin-based Bead&Button magazine,
which has grown in circulation from
5,000 when it started in 1993 to about 180,000 today.
"With sewing, you have to be really good, so it doesn't look like you made it," Korach said.
"But beading is extremely easy."
And affordable. Estimated start-up cost: about $30 for a wire cutter, two types of
pliers for the catches and a board to hold the item while it's being worked on.
The beads themselves range from about 4 cents, for a tiny wooden sphere, to $49, for a
semiprecious stone or acrylic glass pendant.
"I've seen necklaces that sell for hundreds of dollars at Bloomingdale's that you can make for
maybe $40," said Eva Areias, an avid beader and co-owner of The Bead Boutique in Miami.
According to the Hobby Industry Association, the number of
bead stores has doubled to about 1,000 over the past decade and they now serve
more than 2 million beading households.
And the International Bead Expo, which holds its four-day sale and workshop extravaganza
in Miami every two years, attracted 7,000 participants last May, up from 5,000 at the last
Miami venue, in 2001. "It's one of the few crafts that is cross-generational," said Don Meyer, marketing director for the
New Jersey-based association. "And there are so many applications. Now we're seeing people
using beads in scrapbooking, particularly wedding scrapbooks. Tweens are using beads on their
school books, clothes, bags."
The Bead Need in Miami opened 12 years ago, but "it took me till last year to make a profit," co-owner Dee Perry said.
Bead Need is now the largest store of its kind in South Florida, he said, and set to get bigger - moving in February within the same mall but to a space double in size.
"We need more room for classes," said Perry, adding that his customers come from all over for advanced instructions.
The need to bead
USA TODAY Posted 7/31/2003 1:21 PM
Hipsters are opting to take fashion into their own hands — quite literally. The latest
craft and jewelry trend: do-it-yourself-beading. Hipsters are flocking to beading boutiques to
design their own earrings, bracelets, pins, necklaces, and anklets.
But the fun doesn't stop there. Beading parties are gaining in popularity for
birthdays, bachelorettes, and are even replacing book clubs as the chic new girl-bonding event.
"I think more people are getting involved in beading because they enjoy the
creative process and working with their hands," says Jean Campbell, editor of
Beadwork magazine, which reports a 50% circulation jump in the last
five years. "Beading invites personal creativity into every piece, allowing beaders to be imaginative and individualistic."
Lisa Kudrow, Kate Hudson, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Tilly, and Cher are just a few celebrities who bead and
enjoy creating their own jewelry. Even Hendri Bendel in New York zeroed in on the craze and opened up a
do-it-yourself jewelry booth this year.
Want to be your own designer? Hot picks this season include chunky bohemian beads as well as
pink, coral, and
amethyst beads.
Bead shops serve as the hobby's hub, offering tutoring in techniques ranging from basic
stringing to intricate weaving as well as selling thousands of multihued beads from all over
the world and such other supplies as catches, pliers and threads.
At Bijoux Design Creations, in Miami's Bird Road Art District, the walls are
alive with a gorgeous rainbow of strands of such semiprecious stones as
amethyst,
carnelian,
citrine,
garnet and
rose quartz.
The tables, meanwhile, are jammed with pots of smaller beads made from all kinds of
substances -coral,
glass, metals. plastic, seeds, wood, even sparkling Swarovski crystal -
with origins as exotic as they look, including Africa, Bali, the Czech Republic, India.
The dazzling array is often enough to enthuse passersby not only to enter but
also to sign up for $30 beading classes, said Nancy Albert, who opened the shop
with her husband, Dave, in September 2002 after returning to South Florida from
California and finding it hard to get beads. "People are starting to get more into
it here," she said. "And once you start it, it becomes addictive."
The hobby quickly becomes a type of mental relaxation, fans say. "It's a way to de-stress,
something to take your mind off the trials and tribulations of life," said Nancy
Albert, a former corporate-events planner. "Men bead, too."
Terri Skinner, a Palmetto Bay, Fla., homemaker, started about three years ago,
to occupy those times when her pilot husband was away. Now she finds little time for anything else.
Besides actually beading, she teaches beading, works in a bead shop and sells her beaded products.
"I like the diversity of the beads, mixing them for different effects, combining different textures and colors," she said. "Then you get this phenomenal, unique piece of jewelry."
Source: © 2003, The Miami Herald. http://www.herald.com
Source: © 2004, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com
More People, Places and Beads in the News
|
Report A Bug / Request a Product or Feature
