Hi, my name is Jelveh and I am a glass addict. I have been friends with glass for a long time. First I used to do mosaics in glass, about 1989, then a bit of stained glass. I had a day job too, for 15 years I worked at the movie theater, I started as the cashier and worked my way up to the general manager, but thats another time, another story. As my life changed through relationships, jobs and moves from California to Colorado & back to my home town of Santa Cruz, so did my relationship with making things with my hands. At one point when I was rather poor, it became obvious that I could create items with my hands instead of having to buy them, strange thing to learn for a girl who was raised with a silver spoon in her mouth until she was fourteen years old. I fell in love with fabric & mosaics in fabric, feel in love with making jewelry. quilts, gifts, lots of them,
Anyway I digress, during the time I met the current love of my life, Martin, in 2000, I was also working with, Polymer Clay. I remember one night I was making a bracelet, sitting in the living room of our 400 sq.ft using my clay beads & handmade glass beads made in India. I bought them in bags like a pound at a time. More than half were broken & all had this powder stuff coming out of them. I remember telling Martin, I bet someone makes these & makes them nice. I want to make glass beads. A week later he surprised me with a my first torch, a hot head bead making kit, with Cindy Jenkins first book, Making Glass Beads. Inside a week I found a supplier, rented 30 pound tank of map gas, got a regulator & hose, made my hot head a mean working machine for the next 2.5 years…