Our invited ambassadors for IBW 2024 are incredibly excited to be involved with the global beading community. Get to know a little about them as you read how they feel about beading.
Edgar Lopez - USA
I’m very honored to be an IBW ambassador, for me as an artist it is very important to be part of the bead community, to share my passion for what I do and also have the opportunity to learn from others.
I was born and raised in the Caribbean and I was surrounded by colors, that together with my architecture background gave me the opportunity to explore and get inspiration from different shapes and colors, then I moved to USA and I started to explore more different techniques and ways to do beading, the important part of sharing things and learning from everywhere you go.
I have many years exploring and researching a lot of different jewelry techniques and I have been doing a lot of them, but when I met the beading world it was life changing for me. Beading is my business and way of living, but also is my passion, my secure place and gives me a lot of happy moments and a second family.
I can’t tell that I have a favorite technique in beading, I just like to explore and make others happy with my work.
Website for kits and classes:
https://edgar-lopez-designs.myshopify.com/collections/all
Etsy shop for patterns:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/EdgarLopezDesign
Social media:
IG for my beading work: @edgarlopezdesigns
IG as a Photography fan: @picturexke
Joanne Ivy - Australia
Joanne Ivy - Australia
I am excited to be a guest ambassador for International Beading Week 2024. I love what it stands for, the bringing together of beaders to share and celebrate a passion. I moved to Australia from the UK over 20 years ago. I brought some beads with me, and considering I only had two large suitcases, I guess beads were important to me back then. Within a year of being in Australia I had joined the Bead Society of Victoria, was active in online beading forums and had started selling seed beads as a side hustle. Fast forward, I have a shop, I teach and have a bead weaving club and am still involved in the Bead Society. Beading has brought me so many friends, it truly is my life and I have gathered a huge range of knowledge of beads in that time that I love to share. Highlights have been visiting the Toho Factory to see seed beads being made and also a few visits to the Czech Republic to be amazed by bead and button production.
Being in Australia I mostly join in the BWG events online. I love seeing familiar faces in the drop in sessions and the general chit chat about all things beads. It's great that the sessions are accessible to us on the other side of the world in our evenings and I highly recommend getting involved.
Floor Kaspers - Netherlands
As both a bead artist and a bead researcher, I have been very fortunately to travel around the world to see beads being made and used. I strongly believe in the connection that beads can bring within communities, but it can also translate much further. We may not share the same language, but when we put the beads in our hand, we understand each other.
This is also why I think it is wonderful that the International Beading Week is organized yet again, and I am honored to be one of the ambassadors. I live in The Hague, in the Netherlands, but I will bead anywhere. I even stitched beads together while visiting the Borobudur temple in Java, Indonesia.
Beading for me is a soothing activity, and especially the repetition of either Netting or Peyote stitch calms my very busy mind after a full day of work. I often make many smaller components and use those to create larger objects. One of my specialties is making smooth color transitions, generally based on colors that exist in nature.
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram under my name, Floor Kaspers
Meg Thompson - Australia
I am honoured to participate in IBW as a guest ambassador this year!
Hi, I'm Meg, and I'm addicted to beads! I am a self taught bead artist, mainly from books and magazines. I taught myself peyote stitch at 16, and many many stitches and techniques since then, finally discovering bead embroidery in 2011 and I’ve never looked back! Over the years I have also worked with shibori and soutache bead embroidery, polymer clay, and most recently french beading.
My biggest passion is bead embroidery, but I also greatly enjoy bead weaving (especially all things herringbone and RAW-related!) and, in particular, combining the two. In 2021 I began teaching beading to a variety of skill levels, both on Zoom and in person. It gives me great joy to see my students excel, create my designs and incorporate their own style, and share the love of beading. I hope to continue to spread the beading joy this International Beading Week!
abeadedworld.com.au (website coming soon!)
A Beaded World on Facebook and Instagram
Jill Wiseman - USA
I was totally delighted to be asked to be an International Beading Week Guest Ambassador for 2024. I've watched the growth of International Beading Week, and I am thrilled to see more and more of our beading community become aware of the week of beady fun and participate in the many activities organized by the Beadworkers Guild volunteers. It's inspiring and eye-opening to see the joy that beading brings to us all across the globe.
I've been a part of the beading community since I purchased my first tube of beads in 2001, some 23 years ago. In that time, I learned beading at our local bead store, became an employee of that store, and started teaching classes locally, then nationally, and finally internationally. I wrote a book called Jill Wiseman's Beautiful Beaded Ropes in 2013, and started my YouTube channel that same year. The videos there have allowed me to connect with even more beaders across the globe and share this vibrant medium.
Beading changed my life for the better. I hope it has done the same for you. Let's bead!
https://jillwisemandesigns.com/
Gail de Luca - Tennessee USA
It is a huge honor for me to be invited to be a 2023 guest ambassador for International Bead Week. I love the goal of this organization to connect beadworkers all over the world so that more of us can discover the joys that beading can contribute to our lives.
I started my beadwork journey over 20 years ago, teaching myself peyote stitch out of the back of a bead magazine. Before long, I was waking up at night coming up with my own project ideas. What started as a form of relaxation quickly became a creative outlet. In just a few years I had completely changed careers and opened my bead shop in Tennessee, USA in 2006.
Since then I have been fortunate to have shared my love of beadwork with thousands of customers and students, learning and teaching basic techniques as well as designing. I teach classes at my shop weekly, and really enjoy seeing both new and experienced beadworkers have their aha moment of understanding a new stitch or clever tip. And a real bonus has been the friends I have made along the way.
What a great joy it will be to take these moments from the classroom in my little shop to folks around the world!
Places to find me:
https://www.whitefoxbeads.com/