I have been a huge fan of beading my whole life. I love beads, and things that can become beads, and things that really have no business being beads but get conscripted as well. I also love decoupage, and crochet, along with other crafts, though I have to limit myself due to income and, well, space. I would make pretty things for friends and family as gifts, but it never turned into anything more than a hobby and a way to make one-of-a-kind gifts for my loved ones.

I am also a huge Transformers fan. Another hobby of mine used to be building elaborate Transformer costumes and wearing them at conventions, but I didn't have much of a budget, and conventions are expensive. At my first convention, there was a booth where a woman was giving out necklaces she'd made with Shrinky Dinks and paint, where she'd hand-painted the sigils of the two factions onto a sheet and shrank it. She wasn't selling them, because it was just something fun to do. I thought that maybe it would be a way for me to make the sigils into jewelry, as there really wasn't much jewelry available at the time (and there still isn't.)

I experimented with Shrinky Dinks for ages before I finally came to my current design and method of fusing the plastic to make it look more like glass. I got a booth at a convention, and made THOUSANDS of sigils, pre-making earrings, necklaces, barrettes, and bracelets for sale. I made enough money to cover the cost of my entire trip, which was fantastic, and I was bitten.

It's been hard getting to conventions ever since, due to them usually being really far away, but I continue to sell Transformers jewelry on a small scale here, on my site. As far as I know, I'm the only Transformers jewelry maker who does things quite like I do, and there really aren't very many of us at all. I personally know- and am friends with- most of the other jewelry artists.

When I was trying to think of a name for my shop, I thought of the picture of my cat, Chihiro, with paint on her nose after she decided to "help" me with my Red Alert costume. One of my friends had commented "Helpful Cat is painted!" when she saw the picture.

Helpful Cat. I liked the ring of it; it was cute, it wasn't JUST about Transformers, so I could use it for my more conventional jewelry, and it gave me an easy symbol to use for my pieces- I add a cat bead to larger pieces, and use a cat paw print stamp on all boxes.

And thus, Helpful Cat Creations was born.