I'm Marina Nosova, I'm from Tyumen, West-Siberian city in Russia. Nobody from people around me, neither my family nor my friends could even imagine that in my considerable age I could be interested in and fascinated by what is a hobby for many in their childhood or youth and most of them don't come back to that later. And now looking back I'm sure everything was leading me up to the hobby of my life - BEADWEAVING!

As my father was a military man, our family did not have our own permanent residence and we often had to move to my dad's next service assignment point, but every time we've done our best to make a new place like a real home. We've been far from wealth and liked crafting, so my father has made the furniture himself, and clothes has been sewed and altered after over and over again. Clothes decoration was an essential part of it! My grandmother was a master of decoration, the flowers made of small fabric pieces blossomed in her hands, the cute beads and tiny buttons turned into the brooches.

I created my first "jewelry item" when I was nine years old, it was a heart-shaped pendant made of piece of lead: I put in a shard of red glass from a broken car's headlight in a little hole, which I drilled by myself. I also made a chain: I also made a chain: I took a copper wire and wound it around the nail, then cut it and so got the little rings that I assembled into a long chain. Here I should notice that my dad had a whole storeroom full of tools of any kind (his pride and joy!), so from time to time disassembled clocks and household appliances "appeared" here and there at home. And every time my dad calmly and in silence fixed them asking after that just for one thing - to put tools back to their places.

Then I've made several "beaded" necklaces using apple and date seeds... Since all the military stations where my father served were far away from the big cities, I created jewelry of every available material I had at my hands. Thanks to my aunt who was a seamstress, I had a chance to get to know the Czech round and bugle beads. Nobody knows where she managed to get all that luxury stuff when living in a small village!

I graduated from high school in Kazakhstan and had to choose a college to continue my education. As I was an excellent student, it was easy for me to enter any university I wanted. So being of short height but with great ambitions, I decided to study math to become a computer programmer. And after my graduations from the university and after I had been teaching math in the school for 6 years, I finally found a programmer position.

Those days I have developed software for an oil and gas company; there were a lot of business trips, too. It was extremely inconvenient as my kids were too small and sometimes my husband and I had to go for the business trips at the same time so I changed my job and switched to the accounting software development. As a rule, the project management in my company was too week and I had to make a research and study the subject myself. No need to tell you what my next step was: I became an accountant, of course! But when you deal with the numbers and money and ever-changing legislation system, you do not have time to look around you, to relax and enjoy your life. You have to work only - without any breaks, weekends and sometimes even vacations!

For one of my birthdays I have received a handmade gift from my son's girlfriend. It was a simple and rope made of bugle beads. For her birthday I decided to buy a magazine called "Fashion Exclusive" with detailed instructions and step-by-step illustrations on making beaded jewelry pieces. Frankly speaking, the magazine impressed me much so I bought another copy for myself as well! Easy to buy, hard to make! The instructions were a sort of puzzle for me because I did not even know about basic techniques. Lucky we are, there is Internet to help us!

The very first website where I found technique descriptions and easiest patterns was biser.info. To say that I was impressed with what I saw means to say nothing! I was deeply smitten with all the beauty. It was a hit to my heart! I have never even made a bauble in my life and here I saw the amazing Poppy Field Necklace by Zoya Gutina! There were so many magnificent works on the site that take you breath away and inspire you to create something of your own!

Having recovered from my astonishment, I started weaving and I even succeeded in it, but then suddenly and unfortunately I fell down and broke my arm... The doctor put a plaster on my arm and once the first sharp pain had passed and I was able to move my fingers, I returned to the weaving. I think you can imagine what a piece of art it was! Anyway, thanks to staying at home on a sick leave I realized that it was not normal to work without any weekends and vacations and I decided to leave my company.

I love beads for the way they "work" with the light. It looks like the light beats against smooth beads and reflects with millions of sparkles on every side of them, or the light softly envelopes matte beads and hides in their depth, or it slides like a stipple on bugle beads, or it smiles invitingly and predatorily on metallized beads. It seems to me, the more light I catch into my beadwork the happier I am! That is why all my works are usually not flat and made using beads of many types and sizes. A bead artist can paint and can sculpture with beads. I am trying exactly to sculpture. One important thing we have to always remember - listen to the heart and to the soul, they are ever-living sources of inspiration!

Life in a small village in your private house gives you a great opportunity to observe the nature all year round and also be inspired by it! The idea for my necklace "After the First Frost" which won the Second Place in the IBA 2011 bead contest came to me in my garden. Imagine, trees are in all rainbow colors and shades after the first frost; the sun is splashing in a rave of colors in the sharp autumn sky! Amazing picture, isn't it? I used the beads of different size and colors: red, orange, yellow, green, purple to catch the moment and to achieve the maximum resemblance.

Time goes and nature is fading and leaves are turning to other colors but their fancy shapes remain. That was time when the necklace "Hazel Trees" has come into being! Its elegant shape and almost monochrome colors say a lot about my inner world and me. Night garden is another world, enigmatic and mysterious, with no colors but shapes! That is where I found an idea for my new necklace "Twilight Garden". It is so magnificent and royal that I feel as a queen when I put it on! Nature and night garden will never stop inspiring me! Once in the very end of August I witnessed an amazing star shower, so after I was eager to recreate the beauty of the sky through the trees branches in my beadwork and I called that item "Night in September".

There is huge variety of flowers and so much said about them that the life is not enough to make all their analogs in beads! Since I don't like to work with the patterns and I'm lucky to have the garden behind my home, I try to examine flowers properly taking them apart into pieces and to make detailed beaded flowers that could look like real ones.

I mentioned Poppy Field Necklace, my dream was to make something like that and my grandson brought me my poppy flower. First I made a sketch, and then I dried leaves up and drew patterns. Only one thing left - to weave it, and I did that. Double peonies (in my beadwork "Red, Black and Turquoise Peonies") and tiny crocuses in grass (in the necklace "There Dummy Critters Dwell"), flying butterflies (in "Golden Butterfly" and "Silver Moth"), dragonflies, creeping bugs, everything can be sculptured in beads!

Taking part in Fashion Colorworks 2011 beading contest was a great event in my life. After announcement of contest color combinations an idea of "Water Flower" came to me almost immediately and I pictured the image of the future work. To tell the truth, the process of creating this beadwork took a long time because I can make only one petal a day and I cannot weave faster because of different sizes and colors of beads. Then for a log time I have chosen design of the leaf under the flower to make it circle shaped. Later, after the contest I have woven another flower and the bracelet for this shoulder' decoration where I used all available to me shades of green beads.

My second entry according the time of the idea birth was Playing Fishes Necklace; I wanted to create something in offered blue-golden-beige color triad. I have racked my brains over an idea night and day, and my dad looking at my torments said, "Let it go and don't think about it, it will occur by itself!" He turned to be right. Ones, it was towards morning, I dreamed smooth surface of the river and fishes jumping out here and there from the water in splashes. When I got up I made a sketch and my fish scales making challenge started...

But scales are weaved, each scale is attached to the body; pink pearls represent bubbles of air, finished beadwork is photographed and submitted to the contest. But pearl played a bad joke, they were too glossy and the color was lost. I think that is one of the reasons the necklace didn't show up as I intended and wasn't juried into the final. Nevertheless, I am very proud of this necklace, it looks lovely on the model; its design and workmanship seem to me successful.

My next laborious contest entry was the night lamp "Bouquet"; I really wanted to make a lamp for my grandson. I remembered a story of my friend told me about her night lamp. Once she asked her married daughter who took off a sun-like lampshade from the lamp and left it with a bare light bulb, why she did that. And daughter said that being a child she was afraid of the lamp because when she woke up she saw the eyes looking at her, so she didn't not want her son to be afraid of that, too. So I decided to create something that wouldn't frighten my grandson. My intention was good, but technically difficulties were great starting with electrical work and ending with the actual weaving, but I could manage it from start to finish.

My last work I submitted for Fashion Colorworks 2011 and the third one that made the final was the set "Cinnamon", I made from leather, beads and gems. The tactile sensation of leather can be compared to beads and as for leather and beads combination in jewelry, it deserves a separate talk!

Very often I use gemstones in my beadworks. An artist should be able "to talk and listen" to gems, they are not simply bright spots in works; stones have been created by the nature for a years. As soon as you want to use a gem in your jewelry, you should showcase it, as it deserves, that's why I don't like painted stones. A stone with its unique natural "design" is able to add a beautiful accent, so I try not to spoil the tale of nature about charming world.

For now I can make lots of my ideas live. I'd like to hope that my "wishes" and "cans" will match in the future, and I will be able to create interesting beaded jewelry pieces not only for me, but for others, too!

My gallery on MyLovelyBeads.com

About author:

Marina Nosova, Tyumen, Russia
Email address:	chukchaj@yandex.ru
Gallery:	marnos.gallery.ru