I was born in Moscow, Russia in a very artistic family, where I was the only black sheep - I could never draw, and my favorite subject was math. I graduated college and became an engineer. I liked my work and if someone said my life would make a sudden turn and I would become a jewelry designer, I would never believe it. When Perestroyka began, everybody’s life changed. As many other people I lost my steady job, and had to find something else to do. I worked as a sale person, accountant, secretary. Life was quite difficult for me back then. I got married and had two sons. For awhile my husband could support us, but then he lost his job too. And there we were without jobs with 2 small boys and my teenage daughter. I was desperately looking for a way to earn money from home to stay with my kids. One day (it was the luckiest day of my life) I saw an ad in the newspaper for a beading class. They guaranteed a job after a 6-day class, and I decided to try it. I have to say that even though I didn’t think of myself as an artistic person, as most Russian women I could knit and sew and make something out of nothing, so beading didn’t sound too difficult to me. It wasn’t as easy as I thought, and it took me 3 days to finish my first necklace, but I was determined. Of course that guaranteed job never happened, and I had to do something myself with my newly acquired skills. I started selling my necklaces at about $5 a piece in a store next to my house. I wasn’t making nearly enough money to survive, but I was hooked, and wouldn’t give up beading for any other job. When my life long friend Galina, who immigrated to US several years before, came to visit and saw my jewelry, she was amazed, when she heard about the prices, she was shocked. So she decided to help and started selling them on eBay, then she put together a website. That’s when things got better for me. I owe half of my success to Galina. She is a very artistic person herself and has her own shop here on etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/GBDesign. Friendship is the best thing since long before the sliced bread.
The business was going well, but I just couldn’t do the same models over and over again and started experimenting, changing part of the design, and combining pieces of different models into the new ones. That’s when I fell in love with beading all over again. Little by little I got bolder and even invented few new stitches. People often ask where my inspiration comes from. I don’t get any dreams or visions of the new necklaces, I take a needle and start beading something without a clue of what can come out of it, and then an idea starts forming in my head. Usually I have to start from scratch many times before I like what I made. Sometimes it doesn’t work out at all, but when it does, it makes all hours or days of struggling worth while.
The idea of selling patterns of my designs came from the Beadwork Forum at About.com. I am very grateful for this advice. I am still surprised by my patterns’ popularity. I guess it’s because Russian beadwork is so different from traditional American beadwork. I have published 3 books in the series “Beading with Varvara”. The first one is sold out and only digital version is available.
I am grateful to everybody who comes to my website, because the interest in my work is what makes me going.