Stringing-beads is a website about making jewellery in its many guises and forms and is the brainchild of Jacqueline Fouché. I work on this website in my free time, juggling it with other projects, mainly craft-related, and expect that it will grow nicely with new articles being added every fortnight. And more often if I am not too busy at work.

In my real life I have the rather stressful job of being a project manager and information architect. Crafting (or playing with my crayons as my husband calls it) is one of the things that takes the edge of the stress I cope with every day. Somehow moulding clay, hammering and melting are much easier on the nerves than ensuring that high traffic sites are error free.

I build/ create/ assess and improve websites for other people every day and thought it would be gratifying to do the same for myself with Stringing beads. There are a lot of really nice sites and blogs out there but they can be hard to find. So I decided that it would be a good idea to bring my work life and craft interests together.
Stringing-beads is about:

• Providing good tutorials for free
• Giving hints and tips on how to improve your technique
• Telling each other about good books to buy
• Sharing things that inspire you
• Exchanging knowledge on ideas and design tools
• Creating a world wide community of people making jewellery and beads for fun and maybe even a little money
• Participating

At Stringing beads we are not fussed about the medium jewellery are made in. We like mixed media. Due to the fact that I primarily work in polymer clay and more recently silver, the articles will focus on these mediums to start out with. A general section will provide information on assembling jewellery.

To start out with I will focus on adding content but hope to build it into a fully-fledged community site.

If you want to share ideas, comments or inspiration with me, feel free to contact me on jacqueline@stringing-beads.com.

Biography - Jacqueline Fouché

I think I was born an artist. That is one of the reasons why I decided to study multimedia. A (then) relatively new field combining the artistic (visual design) with the scientific (computer science).

In the past few years I've become more and more involved in the logistics of creating websites and the yearning to get my hands dirty - moving away from the world of bits and bytes to that of the material. As a result I picked up making jewellery again. For me, there is something magical about pointing at something saying ' I made that'. Unlike the, sometimes ethereal, world of the web.

I am a mixed media artist but have fallen in love with polymer clay loving the variety of things you can do with it. I have a restless spirit so who know what I will get interested in next.

I am a South African living in London. I do all my work out of my 'studio' – the extra bedroom in the back of the house - that my husband dubbed the winter palace because I keep the windows open when I work.

Interests

Jewellery making, reading science, history and science-fiction, travel, design, photography.