Meet your 2024 Bead Cruise Instructors
Beki Haley
Beki has been in love with beads for over 50 years now. She was introduced to the amazing art form of seed bead weaving by her grandmother when she was a child. That early start in exploring the intricacy and fine detail that can be attained with seed beads has stayed with Beki throughout her life. Even as a young teen, Beki loved teaching others all the beautiful things that can be created with beads. She has over 36 years of teaching experience in several different venues from large auditorium settings to intimate one-on-one classes and everything in between.
Training as a classic silversmith at a young age gave Beki an appreciation and understanding of the art and beauty of jewelry design. Beki uses those formal skills to teach the technical aspects of jewelry design. In her classes, the students learn the importance of attention to detail and craftsmanship while exploring their natural creativity. During any stressful time in her life, Beki turns to her beads for comfort and calm. The meditative action of beading is the perfect tool to bring peace and joy to her otherwise busy and chaotic life. Sharing that joy by teaching others how to create with beads is a blessing beyond measure.
Learn more about Beki from her Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/beki.haley
Or websites:
www.BekiHaley.com
www.BeadersDreamRetreat.com
Sherry Serafini
Art found me at birth. Beading found me in the 90’s. I was always that kid that painted in the corner during recess and doodled images of my cartoons during math class. Like most true artists, my eyes see things in a different way than others do and I’m so grateful to have had the path that I’ve traveled. I’ve explored a million mediums, but my chosen expression is bead embroidery. Bead embroidery is “painting with beads”…it’s “mixed media”….it’s storytelling and thought provoking. It’s an adventure to me every time I sit down to create.
Unusual objects and shapes become part of a new story as Sherry stitches beads and gemstones, one at a time, to a felt like base. Most pieces are born spontaneously as the beads and Sherry’s imagination dictate the design. She seldom works from sketches. Sherry finds this meditative form of art to be a rich counterpoint to a society full of instant gratification.
Sherry was raised in a military family, moving every few years. She credits that nomadic lifestyle with giving her an adventurous and uninhibited approach to her work.
Sherry was voted one of the top 10 instructors in the United States by Bead & Button magazine. She lectures and teaches throughout the U.S. and has won numerous awards for excellence in design, including Saul Bell Outstanding Jewelry Design Award, Bead International 2006, Kennedy Best of Pennsylvania and Kennedy Best of Nationally. She has been published and has written articles for several well-known magazines. Her work has been featured on the covers of trade magazines and catalogs and is the co-author of the Art of Bead Embroidery with artist and dear friend Heidi Kummli and Sensational Bead Embroidery by Sherry Serafini.
Sherry’s beaded art is known internationally and is owned and worn by Grammy winner Melissa Etheridge, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, and singer Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas. Her beadwork has been seen at fashion week in Milan, and in recent years Las Vegas her beaded headbands were worn at the MGM concert venue by Steven.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/sherryserafini
Tracy Stanley
Tracy Stanley is a Washington State native and is currently living in the beautiful town of Sequim. She has had the pleasure of teaching wire and metal classes all over the country for over the past 35+ years and has traveled to a variety of stores, shows and even cruises. Tracy is a self-described low-tech metal and wire worker that loves organic elements and brings that into her work. Tracy is a big believer in quality tools and solid techniques and enjoys passing this on to her students so that they too can make amazing pieces that are structurally sound pieces that they can be proud of. Teaching is truly her happy place.
Tracy has written two books: Making Wire & Bead Jewelry and Exploring Metal Jewelry both available on Amazon.
Email: tracyastanley@hotmail.com
Janice Peacock
Janice Peacock has been flameworking glass since 1992 and specializes in sculptural beads that look ancient, as well as glass and mixed-media jewelry. In 2011 she was a Visiting Artist at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, where she collaborated with its hot shop team to make large versions of her small sculptures. Janice has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. Her beads and jewelry have been featured in many glass publications and are in the permanent collections of the Tacoma Museum of Glass and the Corning Museum of Glass.
In recent years Janice has turned her focus toward creating micromosaic glass jewelry, combining her love of glass and miniatures. In 2023 she received the prestigious Vi and Alexx Cheng Scholarship from the International Society of Glass Beadmakers, which will support her trip to Ravenna, Italy, to study micromosaics at the Mosaic Art School.
Janice has taught glass beadmaking at private studios and non-profit art programs across the U.S. for over twenty-five years. She has taught micromosaics on Zoom to hundreds of students worldwide since 2020.
Janice Peacock is a mystery author specializing in craft and hobby mysteries. She loves to write about artists who find new ways to live their lives and perhaps catch a criminal or two along the way. While working in a glass studio with several colorful and quirky artists, she was inspired to write the Glass Bead Mystery Series. The Ruby Shaw Mysteries, set in a small hillside mining town, were inspired by her trips to Jerome, Arizona, and Jacksonville, Oregon.
Janice lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Jeff, two cats, and an enormous Great Pyrenees dog.
Connect with Janice online at www.janicepeacock.com or @JanPeac on social media.`
Kinga Bledsoe (née Nichols)
Kinga Bledsoe was born in 1980, in Hungary. At 19, she packed up her life in a backpack and moved to the US where she has been residing since, albeit not at the same place. She currently lives in Boulder, Colorado with her boyfriend and furbabies Samantha Regina Nichols and Marley. Samantha Regina is not only her muse but her model as well. Many of Kinga's best known pieces were popularized by the canine model.
One way or another Kinga has been always making things, which started turning into a career when she was painting murals at the time she lived in New York. The murals were fun, but she did not feel like painting was her calling. Eventually she picked up a bead and Button magazine in 2007, found a bead embroidery project, and slowly but surely the obsession took over.
After that first project, she started creating her own designs and quickly found her own distinctive voice that allowed her to translate her imaginings into beadwork. Kinga is always brainstorming, and her imagination provides an endless supply of fanciful ideas that she translates into bead embroidery.
Her work first got noticed in the first Battle of the Beadsmith, quickly followed by her being a BeadDreams finalist in 2013 and getting 3rd place in the same competition in the Swarovski category in 2014, and a book feature in Marcia Decoster Presents, 2014. In 2015 she won first place in the crystal category in BeadDreams. She has done a number of instructional bead embroidery videos for Interweave publishing in 2016 and 2017, and has been featured in magazines in the US and Europe.
In 2013 she started teaching and she hopes to continue this as her chosen profession for a long time to come, not only passing on beady knowledge, but perhaps her unique way of looking at the world as a magical place filled with endless possibilities.
Website: http://crimsonfrogdesigns.blogspot.com
Marcia Balonis
Marcia has worked with beads since her hippie years, a very long time ago. She has taught a variety of bead pieces at national, regional, and local levels for over 20 years while travelling for work as a financial manager. After retirement from the financial world in 2008, Marcia says she changed from being a “bean” counter to a “bead” counter.
Her publications include numerous articles in many bead and mixed medial publications including Bead and Button, Beadwork, Jewelry Crafts, Perlen Posie, Bead Jewellery Magazine (UK), Expressions, and Belle Armoire. Marcia taught at various national conventions including Art Continuum, Celebrate Art, Bead Fest, and at The Bead and Button Show every year from 2005-2019. Her book, Lush and Layered Beadweaving was published in 2018. She loves to share her passion for bead work with her students.
Designing with beads and creating patterns has let to opening an Etsy shop where she primarily sells patterns and kits. Her talent for bead pattern construction led to several years as a Starman Trendsetter.
Now living in Florida, she enjoys teaching jewelry at local bead stores, at retreats, regional conventions
marcia.balonis@gmail.com
https://www.etsy.com/shop/BaublesbyBalonis