After the first couple of years of making jewelry professionally, I started experimenting with fabric leftovers. At that moment my daughter was in kinder garden and we had a lot of available materials for her school projects. Felt drew my attention immediately. It was soft, steady and easy to handle but also available in a great variety of colors and in a good price. So I sat down and made my first felt necklace and the same day I wore it and went to a kid’s party with my little one. Moms were very curious about this necklace. “What is this?”, “What is the material?”, “Wow! You made that?”. Among guests there was a gallery owner who told me that he had never seen something like that before. “You should do something about it” he said and so I did. Soon all of my jewelry designs were based on felt. I started cutting long stripes to make swirl beads by mixing 2 colors. First stripes were hand cut but soon I started using guillotine cutter for a better result. Then I rolled every bead by hand and used coated wire to sew the swirl beads together and create a colorful raw of candy-like beads (see full procedure here). The result was very joyful and suited my colorful concept. I used this technique for many years and created all types of jewelry but necklaces and brooches were my favorite. Through those “felt” years I met a lot of people who were excited with these pieces especially due to their color combinations and lightweight feeling. The “Bead A Boo” felt jewelry was appreciated mostly by women over 50 years old who like colorful and bold statement jewelry. Yes, through this procedure I learned that older women are more willing to wear different jewelry.

Milestones

One of my necklaces was awarded with the “A’ Design Awards” in 2015 and this made me very happy because I never expected to get an award with a piece of jewelry made of such a cheap material. The most touching moment of my “felt jewelry career” was when a lady gifted one of my brooches to her mother who was recovering from a serious trauma. Daughter’s research on such a health condition suggested tactile jewelry and her mother really enjoyed the soft texture and vivid colors of the brooch. It was an incredible feeling for me. I never thought that my creations could become a therapeutic agent. Another milestone of my felt years was the making of an enormous neckpiece that I created for a design exhibition. It looked like a vest and was part of a collection called “In_Spiral”. Some other pieces came along with the vest and all of them where very impressive but not so easy to wear since they were made for exhibition purpose. You can see the whole collection here.

Who wants one?

After all these productive years of making thousands of felt beads it’s time for me to leave this technique aside for a while and focus on silver designs. So I decided to sell all of my felt jewelry and make more people happy. I have a sale on Instagram and you can check every day for updates in my stories.

Love you all!