Charlotte Holley - Beaded Legends by Chalaedra by Sigrid Wynne-Evans     © June 2006   Thinking of beading up something UNIQUE? Something that has a style and class like nothing else anyone has seen? If that is what you are looking for, take a look at Charlotte Holley's patterns!
Charlotte offers earrings and pendants that are as unique as anything you could wish for. Lacy earrings with lots of fringe, incredible treatment of cabs, you should find something to challenge you, with incredible results. Don't miss "Gypsy Rose" (item 10317) and the "Filigree Bracelet and Earrings" (item 10947).   Check out her Holiday Angels (item 10682). I really like these angels. They would be terrific as ornaments! The Christmas Chickadee Ornament set (item 10367) would also look great on your tree, or as a pendant.   Charlotte has had her share of troubles. But somehow, she remains very positive through it all. Perhaps the beads helped? Here is her amazing story:
Sampling of Charlotte's Designs: Click on an image to view the pattern information.

I was born in Albuquerque, NM, but moved with my parents to Texas when I was three months old. An only child, I grew up in West Texas with parents who were both gifted with their hands. My mom taught me to crochet and embroider, and I learned many other handcrafting skills from my father. By the time I was twelve, I was making homemade gifts for my family and friends at Christmas, a habit I have kept alive to the present.

I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin (in Odessa), majoring in mass communications with a minor in marketing. I also took photography and art in college, having developed a love for drawing when I was in my teens. I currently live near Houston, Texas and have been here for six years. I have a daughter and two grandchildren who live in West Texas. A widow since 1977, I live with a housemate who is my best friend and the sister I never had, several cats and two old dogs we took in to help a friend whose mother was ill (they belonged to her mother).

I work on the Internet, managing my own and a few other websites, designing new patterns and writing articles, short stories, poems, etc., for publication. I have written three novels and have started the fourth and am working on getting them published. I also supplement my income with freelance photography and floral design.

I have always had a love for jewelry. In 1987 my teenage daughter brought home a beaded earring one of her friends had given her--ONE earring, mind you! I liked it and had the idea that if there were two of them, then there would be something of hers that I could borrow from time to time. I had no idea what the kind of beadwork was called or how to do it, but since I knew how to knit, macrame, crochet and embroider, I figured, how hard could it be? I went out and bought some beads, sat down and made a pair of earrings ... it took DAYS, but I found something I totally loved doing. I couldn't find any beads to match that earring until I had been beading for almost a year. In that length of time, I had branched out and was making necklaces, anklets, bracelets--you name it, all my own design and I had fifty unique designs of my own and a new avocation. To make a long story short, I never finished the matching earring to the one I borrowed, and I never returned that little beaded earring to my daughter. However, she did get LOTS of jewelry out of the deal and she was happy.

Sampling of Charlotte's Designs
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
            

I have never taken any bead classes and only read a couple of books on the subject. I am influenced by any and every new design I see. I admire all of the designers out there and how incredibly and wonderfully their imaginations work to create something new and remarkable using just a needle, thread and a few beads.

My "greatest" piece of beadwork... that is the "biggest" one I have done is a breastplate designed for my best friend--two angels facing one another. It was several years in the planning stage. My friend bought a string belt when she was in Dallas once. The belt wasn't all that great, but it had four sodalite hearts on it which were the reason she bought it. She later found a larger carved sodalite pendant, and she took them all to a silversmith to have them mounted with silver. She asked me to design a piece which would incorporate all five pieces of sodalite in a way they wouldn't get tangled up when she wore them.

Sampling of Charlotte's Designs
Click on an image to view the pattern information.


   

The idea of the two angels facing one another, their wings, hands and robes touching with a piece of the sodalite suspended at each joining was born. It took me three months to bead the piece, once I finally got it graphed, and the graphing was a major accomplishment ... I didn't have a program to graph it on and the beadwork of the breastplate is entirely of size 15/0 seed beads. I had to graph it with felt tips on teeny-tiny graph paper (a tad smaller than the actual size 15/0 seed beads) so the holes I graphed would be the right size for the sodalite pieces. It was the first piece I ever graphed and I thought it might be the last one I ever finished! I have to say at the time I was beading the piece, I was also keeping my grandchildren twelve hours a day ... I would keep them four days, be off for two and then have them four more days while their mom went to work as a CNA (Certified Nursing Aide). Probably that is the reason it took so long to do the piece, but it is large--approximately 8" x 10".

I started out designing, and except for that initial earring my daughter brought home, I never did anyone else's designs until I had already been designing a couple of years. When I first learned to bead, it was completely self-taught and practically spontaneous... I would see an earring or necklace (a regular one with metal, not beads) and mentally transform that design into beads.

Sampling of Charlotte's Designs
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
         

I first heard about B-P three or four years before I got up the courage to join. I was in a beading group and some of the girls in the group got all excited about B-P and Rita. They started making and selling patterns and encouraged me to get involved, but I was chicken! I thought I needed to be an accomplished pattern maker, which I wasn't (I was still drawing them out by hand on graph paper with felt tips)! I didn't know Rita would walk me through each step of the process and supervise me until I had enough experience to begin to make the patterns on my own. I wish I had started when I first heard about B-P, because it has been such a wonderful experience for me, but since I didn't, I am just glad I got started when I did!

I have always collected stones--crystals, cabs and the like, since I was a very young child. My goal was one day to learn to do wire wrap. When I started beading, it wasn't very long before I figured out how to bead a bezel for any stone I had. That was my greatest joy, discovering I didn't have to wait until I learned wire wrap (which I still don't know!) to be able to make things with my stones.

Sampling of Charlotte's Designs
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
            

My daughter was in a car accident when she was seventeen and broke her back. She lost the entire summer with stays in the hospital, infections and fusion surgery of her spine. We got a sizable insurance settlement and, after talking it over, decided to invest in the future by opening a bead shop where we could teach others the joy of beading and have a place to showcase my work and that of others. We opened the shop just before Desert Storm (the first one!) in Austin, which was still a military base sort of place. We met a lot of people, taught a lot of folks to bead and sold a lot of earrings, beads and other merchandise, but people were afraid there was going to be another world war and they just didn't feel good about spending money on frivolities. Thirteen months after we opened, we were forced to close the shop because we just couldn't generate enough income. That was my biggest disappointment.

Everything influences my designs. Birds, trees, cats, dogs, abstract paintings ... I seem to see potential for designs in anything and everything I come in contact with! Sometimes I gather up components (stones and beads) I like and put them together as fuel for thought. Eventually I will have a design which incorporates the pieces.

I have a desk in the office where I do my beadwork. My laptop sits on the pull-out drawer so that it can be pushed in and my desktop is my beading space. I go between the desktop and the laptop creating new designs. For patterns, I use The Bead Cellar for peyote/brick stitch designs, and I use my word processor (Word Perfect) to do dangles and smaller designs, converting them to PDF files from Word Perfect.

Sampling of Charlotte's Designs
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
      

Two things I would like to do:
1) A series of endangered species that I could display in museums and places to increase awareness, both of beadwork and the animals.
2) Some large three-dimensional castles, because I love fantasy things. I envision them with tiny lights inside them to show off stained glass windows of transparent beads, this is another idea I have been kicking around for several years.

My husband died in a car crash when I was twenty-seven years old; my daughter was four at the time. I went to college after he died, working two or three part time jobs while I was going through school. I began and finished my degree plan in three years and began making a living for my daughter and myself. She was extremely disturbed by the loss of her father and so I found working was not always possible, because I needed to be there for her. It was a hard life, but she finally came out of it and I was able to move on with my life and goals.

Since I was self-taught as a beader, many of my techniques are completely different from the established traditional methods. After I met other beaders and noticed the differences in techniques, I had some of them share their methods with me, but I went back to my own ways. I'd like to write up a guide for those who buy my patterns so they might understand why I do the things I do the way I do them! Most of my designs will work no matter what techniques are used, but to my way of thinking, some of the methods I use are quicker and easier. I hope to have the time to do the guide to my way of beading in the not too distant future--there is just so much to do and so little time!

Sampling of Charlotte's Earring Collections on CD - Available at Sova-Enterprises.com
Click on an image to view the pattern information.