About Us

Hello,

A little about us: We are Stephanie (30's) and Mark (40's); we have been married for several years (though we have different surnames!).

Stephanie's working-life background is in Personnel and Mark's is in Engineering - a long way from jewellery making and such pleasures, though Stephanie had always been into making and doing creative things including stamping, embroidery and jewellery making and Mark is pretty good with machines and numbers.

Some years ago, after a long time thinking about it and some rather life changing things having occurred, Stephanie decided it was time she got on and began the business she had always talked of, and that led on to Mark learning all sorts of things he had never imagined during his life in Engineering - how to create a web site, (how to count thousands of beads and how to use a crimp bead amongst other things!); after a time we realised we were working together so Mark became a Beadaddict too; our skills complement each other - Mark does all the clever technical stuff and packing and Stephanie does the creative, buying and administrative stuff - we really like working together.

We are passionate about our business - we seem to live it night and day - and even then despite there never being enough hours in the day, it doesn't feel like work to us - we enjoy our work, we like our customers; we make friends of many of them; we are constantly learning - and this makes doing what we do a joy to us.

We put 100% effort in to it to make BeadAddict something we can be proud of - our business is our 'baby'; perhaps our paths will cross with yours one day and you might need to speak to or write to us - it could be Stephanie, it could be Mark, but we thought it was only right that we should let you know who you were dealing with.

Kind regards,

Stephanie and Mark - photo taken on holiday approx. Oct 2000 - a newer one to follow as soon as poss (this one is so old because Stephanie hates having her photo taken and usually runs away very fast when a camera is produced).

Beadaddict..."BEADS and other stuff"...

Before Beadaddict was born, we confess to having been somewhat indifferent to the delights to which we have now given our hearts and souls (we did not realise they were treasure). Beads were the sort of thing that your granny wore - they couldn't possibly be worn by anyone below the age of - well, we'll leave that one alone shall we, because we are bound to insult someone; the image of beads and associated jewellery making has undergone nothing short of a revolution in recent times, and many people now deeply appreciate the love and care that goes into making the component pieces of an end product that most of us enjoy, jewellery.

As you may know, we have two other web sites, we began making tiaras and wedding jewellery, progressed on to making other jewellery (see the links page) and we found it hard to source the 'ingredients'. We wanted the best stuff - after all if you are spending precious time making it then it is worth putting in the nicest things, the most scrumptious ingredients to make something that will still look good in six months…six years…sixty years, and beyond...

These days, there is a lot of bead jewellery available, though 'jewellery artists' put a distinctive stamp on their creativity, knowing they are giving a part of themselves with their jewellery, making pieces on which they are proud to put our names, and Beadaddict hopes to assist in this process by offering components which will match the quality of the workmanship in the end product.

Over time, all sorts of beads seemed to creep into our heart and home, and we learned what we could about them, what was good and worth having, and we thought it might be good to have a place where you could find those things. We aim for a secure site offering a friendly, reliable, quick turnaround service retailing a comprehensive bead and jewellery making range from the four corners of the earth, offering the beautiful, the ususual, the hard to find, antique, special and good quality items including Venetian and dichroic glass, lampwork beads, tools, stringing, books, magazines and most other things you can think of. We appreciate your custom, and recognise that it is you who makes Beadaddict what it is - your support is important because without it, there would be no Beadaddict.

So here is our bead web site...'Beadaddict'...because as we soon found out…you may start off indifferent, but you don't stay that way for long….let the fun and creativity begin...