NWT Arts

I started drawing when I was 11 or 12. I would visit with my grandmother and watch her work. She had a very unique way of making flowers with a strawberry in them. Her concentration made her so calm and focused. That’s when I would do my own drawings. I encouraged myself to keep going. Now I make everything from mini slippers to bags to pictures, collages, and crafts of all sorts. I love drawing patterns where the beads will be sewn.

I often am thinking about designs when I am alone. When I am travelling, I look at designs all around me and doodle to make a pattern. If I don’t like the shape I can just change it. I use patterns more than once this way. I save them and when it is time to put something together, I match them up to make the pattern bigger or smaller. Sometimes it takes a day and half just to draw the design and then lay it on the hide. But it is not that easy. You kind of have to mingle it in. After you find the colours to do embroidery or beads and the outcome is awesome. It just comes to me naturally after doing it for so many years.

My beading is all intertwined and all over each other. I like the way I make my leaves. I make them so that you can just curl them up. If you use delica or small size 11 beads it just goes with the curls.