After leaving a Fashion Designer and Production manager position, Natalie  wanted to explore her creative side. The lure of creating her own fashion label business and in particular choosing her own hours started her onto the path of self employment. Fortunately, the medium of textiles was replaced with glass and the seed of fascination with glass beads was planted. From the creation of beaded flowers, to floral beads the Beaded Flower Garden has blossomed.

Natalie's first introduction to lampwork was not as inspiring as you might think. Initially she felt they were "too chunky and plain". It took a floral lampwork bead by Marie-Claude Chapman for the instant addiction of lampworking to take hold. With the mentoring of Kim Miles and Lish Diffendarfer and a dash of perseverance, Natalie is now producing spectacular beads.

A year ago, Natalie took a 2 day introductory course in glass beading. With the many layers required for her beloved floral's and "spending up to two hours on making ONE floral bead" saw Natalie very quickly procuring a Minor.   Now she is toying with the idea of a newer, hotter torch like the GTT Lynx or Bethlehem Piranha.

Colour: Light Pink Striker (Bullseye Colour Stix) and Gaffer's intense colours. Natalie uses chunks of Gaffer to pull her own stringer, which in turn is used for the flower petals. "Since the colour is so intense, the flower pops out of the background."

Grey is far too neutral for Natalie and it rates as her least favourite colour.

Bead Style:  Florals because of the dimensional effect of the glass layers. 

Bead Artist:  Kim Miles, Lish Diffendarfer for their beautiful beads and mentoring and Leah Fairbanks for those amazing cane petals.