Miscellaneous

I've always loved flowers, fairy tales, and jewelry. Where I grew up in a small coastal Texas town, there were few flowers amid the salt grass and sand, and the austere life of a fisherman's daughter was devoid of glamour. My father taught me practical skills: how to make fishnets from twine, and crab traps from wire, the unromantic fiber of our everyday life. But I knew from my beloved fairy tales that it was possible to transform the ordinary, to create something wonderful from nothing much. So the fishnet "stitch" I learned became a web out of which jeweled flowers from the crab trap wire grew. Eventually, this childhood fantasy became The Russian Princess Necklace. And the florals in my jewelry evolved too, from my take on French beaded flowers with collectible beads to their latest incarnation: sculptural lampwork glass flowers I make myself. THAT is the ultimate for any practical princess: fantasy flowers from nothing but fire and bits of glass. Magic!