Although Shelby started making jewelry in 2005 and Costa has been hand-making beads since mid-2007, we have both been involved in creative ventures for years.  Shelby,  Fine Arts degree in hand, first went to work for a small Boston graphics company.  The year was sometime B.C. (Before Computers) and, a few years later, she eventually, somehow, landed in the NYC cosmetic industry.  Computers became commonplace.  Shelby trained on a variety of graphics software and quickly became the 'go to' graphic person in her department, designing/producing training manuals and the like.  She met Costa (his lucky day), who owned  a small custom T-shirt shop in NJ.  Shelby started hand-painting t-shirts and sweats for the store and eventually was getting custom orders for her hand painted items.  All this lead to their marriage in 1993 (didn't see that coming, did you?) Life was good.  Shelby left NYC for a job in Princeton, NJ, where she still works.   In between, she became interested in hand made jewelry, took some excellent courses, and started to produce some wonderful pieces.  But to make the jewelry truly unique, Costa thought the beads themselves should be hand made.  Yeah, what's his story?

Around 1984, unimpressed with the Christmas cards I was seeing in stores, I thought, heck, I could do better than that!  With no art training since high school, I made my own Christmas cards and have continued to do so since.  The hand drawn cards were well received and have improved over the years.  (Well, I like to think so!) It was this interest in card design that eventually, somehow lead me to buying the T-shirt shop.  I also took computer graphics classes.  I was designing my own line of t-shirts and producing custom invitations, posters, shirts, logos, etc.  The rent on the T-shirt shop became too expensive and I eventually, somehow got a normal job, assuming there is such a thing.  But I just enjoyed making cards and shirts too much and I've never really stopped.  When Shelby started making jewelry, we converted our basement into our studio.  The studio includes the computer desk, the clay work table, the drawing table, the jewelry assembly table, and the clay baking oven among the shelves, posters and hobby horse hanging from the ceiling.  I work part time now, devoting as much time to the studio as I can.  I create the clay beads and pendants, Shelby designs the jewelry and wires/assembles all the pieces.  We see how far we've come and look ahead at how far we can go.  Life is still very good.