Blogiversary Giveaway!!!

I can hardly believe it! Picture me... happily blogging for four years! Time has flown by, I've made wonderful friends and even met some of them in person. In this blogging community there are some of the MOST supportive, friendly, classy, talented, creative and loving people I know. It's changed my life in so many good ways!


It just so happens that the 4th birthday of Beadlust coincides with another important marker in my life...


Ten years ago, I wrote and self-published my first book, One Bead at a Time, Exploring Creativity with Bead Embroidery. It was a remarkable experience in many ways.

When I started thinking about this book, I telephoned Helby Imports, the nation's only distributor of beading books to bead shops. With trembling voice, I asked to talk with the owner and then told him my ideas for the book. He totally discouraged me, saying no book would ever sell unless it included both projects and techniques. He said they wouldn't carry it.


Not completely daunted, I then called several publishers. They all said the same thing. It almost stopped me in my tracks. Almost. My experience teaching Improvisational Bead Embroidery workshops was so powerful and my students seemed so empowered by it, that I just had to try.

So I wrote it, took the photos for it, designed it in Microsoft Publisher, printed 300 copies of it on my ink-jet printer, had it professionally bound in Seattle and put the word out to my beady friends and students. In just 2 months I had sold all 300 copies!

That was my test run and as far as I was concerned, a successful one! So at that point, I added 8 pages showing basic techniques of bead embroidery and took out a loan to have 2,500 copies printed professionally! I gave Helby Imports a money-back-guarantee if they would just try one case of my book. They took the offer and have sold many, many cases of them since then.


Three more times, the press has rolled! Each time, as the number of beading books increases geometrically and others are publishing books about bead embroidery, the book moves more slowly. Today, I have exactly 4 remaining copies from the last printing.

And guess what? I'm going to give away one specially inscribed copy for each year of my blogging life! Details at the end of this post.

Am I going to reprint? No, I think One Bead at a Time had a lot more time on the active book market than most beading books. And for this I'm very grateful. Now it's time to retire it. However, the good news is I'm not retiring it completely. In the next few days, I will convert it to pdf format and make it available as a FREE download through my website. It won't be a pretty, bound book. But a person can print it and read it, which is still a good thing.


One Bead at a Time has influenced many lives. I know because people write to tell me about it. Bless them. In turn their lives influence mine in the most wonderful ways. I am so grateful to have stumbled on the notion of improvisational bead embroidery and to have the skills to teach others the value of it in developing creativity and artistic self confidence.

If you are one who has purchased this book, I thank you, for you have helped to keep me out of a 9-to-5 job and given me time to do my own art work and to organize the Bead Journal Project, now in its third year.

So, today we are having a
Beadlust
birthday party
and a
One Bead at a Time
retirement party!!!

To have a chance at winning one of the four remaining copies of One Bead at a Time, please leave a comment on this post and include your email address. It doesn't have to be for you; you could win it and give it to a friend, perhaps someone just starting to bead. If you win, you can tell me to whom you'd like it inscribed.

Please remember to include your email address. To keep the hackers away, write your email address like this: WantToWin(at)YourBook(dot)com. Use (at) rather than @ and (dot) rather than .

Thanks, everyone, you are special and tremendous in every way!