About Me
My name is Maria Edna Britskey, I'm Indonesian, living in beautiful Ontario, Canada. I make handmade beaded jewelry and lampwork glass beads. I found lampwork beads a few years ago on Ebay while looking for gemstones for my jewelry design. I fell in love and started buying. I have many beads from artists I found mostly on Ebay. During 2006 I took an introductory class at BeadFX, about 6 months later I decided to buy my equipment. It wasn't an easy decision because I had doubts that I would be any good at it. During one of my late night email conversation with Corina, one of my favorite artist, she told me to go for it. I did, and I'll be forever grateful that I listened to her. Her book, Passing the Flame, is the one book I will continue to learn from for a long long time. After a while I still had a hard time making perfect beads, so I took a private class with Amy Waldman. Thats when I finally get the hang of things. So, thank you Amy! ^__^ Long story short, I've been happily making beads, and I know that I will be making beads for the rest of my life! Woo Hoo!!!

About My Beads
My specialty are focal beads and my favorite are heart shape and cute, chubby turtles. I consider the turtles to be my signature beads (some of you might not agree, but hey, this is my website!) ^__^ My first turtle bead was inspired by Maria Grimes's, whose beads I adore so much. I use the highest quality Italian glass, Moretti/Effetre brand for my beads, and kiln anneal them for durability. I sent them all over the world, including France, Spain and Australia, but mostly to United States. My beads are still far from perfect, but they are definitely cute enough to make your heart melt. ^__^ Thank you for taking an interest in my work, I am deeply humbled.

About Lampwork Beads
Lampwork beads are made by melting and manipulating glass rods in a flame. The glass is wound around a steel rod called a mandrel that has been coated with bead release to prevent the glass from sticking to the mandrel. When its done, the beads placed into a kiln for annealing process to ensure their durability. Usually the next day, when the beads cooled down, its removed from the mandrel and cleaned from the bead release. I am a self representating artist (SRA), means I handmake all my beads one by one in my home studio and follow all the necessary procedures to produce high quality beads like annealing process and cleaning the beads from the bead release properly, as oppossed to mass produced lampwork beads which made by factory workers, without proper annealing which produce unreliable beads and no proper cleaning of the bead release which could be a health hazzard. To learn more about SRA and the difference between good lampwork beads and mass produced lampwork beads, click HERE

Disclaimer
Very rarely happen, but please be advised that although it's been annealed for durability, breakage could occur if impacted. Some of the beads will have small pieces/decorations that could fly off or fall off when the bead is dropped, please be aware that broken edges could be sharp. If breakage occur please discontinue use. WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - Most of my beads are very small. Not for Children under 14.