Creator of handmade ceramic bead, pendants, cabochons, buttons. Lots of glorious hand painted silks too in three styles and lots of colors.
I have always been a maker. As a child I was always in my mothers DMC collection to work on making friendship bracelets. I remember discovering tigers tail and seed beads around the same time. For hours I would sit and make - and I loved it.
While in college I was not quite sure what direction I wanted to go in, and was guided towards Entomology since I wanted to work with "animals". During that time, I felt a disconnect with school as I was working 3 part time jobs just to make ends meet. So with my now husbands encouragement, I took a ceramics class. After 1 semester, I was encouraged again, this time by my grad student teacher to take another class (since I seemed to quite enjoy it and spent a lot of time in the studio). That was in 1997, and I have never been away from clay since.
When I was finished with college in 2001, I first started making small ceramic tiles, but soon realized that people wanted to wear them, so in 2002, I started making and selling ceramic beads. For a few years I traveled all over the US selling my beads through the Innovative Beads Expo shows, and other shows in Tucson, AZ and Tacoma, WA. It was a wonderful life traveling, making bead friends that became more like family and getting my work out there.
When websites, Etsy, Blogging, Amazon and such started taking over the internet around 2007, I just happened to hit my first life changing whirlwind that set me on another path. I lost my mom to Leukemia in September 2007, and had my first child in December 2007. I stopped traveling when my mom became sick, and after having my daughter I did my last Tucson show, and decided no more until I was in a better place in my life.
In Dec. 2009 my son was born and I focused all of my selling efforts through Etsy (tried to maintain a website, but that just was too much for me to deal with). I changed up my line of beads from larger pendants to smaller spacer beads, and worked on some jewelry kits for the silks I sell incorporating my beads).
Around 2014 I started to feel burnout from working alone in my basement studio. The economy was not all that great for makers, and I didn't want to make beads, just to make them. I happened to take a couple of needle felting classes with Sara of SarafinaFiberArt.com and when I went to their shop open house in October 2014, Sara offered me a job working at the Sarafina Art House (in Elkton, MD) helping with kit production, wool bunlding, and shipping of orders.
I cannot express how thankful I am for being offered a creative job working for such a fun company. As the company has grown, positions have changed, and everyone there can do a little bit of everything around the shop. Sara showed me how to wash and dye sheep fleeces about a year after I began, and now I am able to shop for the fleeces we need, and get them washed and dyed. I absolutely LOVE the texture and colors of fleeces and my creativity often goes into my job there.
I still make ceramic beads and do not plan on stopping running my Marsha Neal Studio business. I mainly keep listings here on Etsy updated with refreshed listings that have new items to replace sold ones. I do monthly Facebook Group sales with new items on a regular basis.
I have also been a blog contributor on ArtElements.net blog over the last couple of years. There are great weekly and monthly themes and challenges there to keep creativity flowing.
The kids are getting bigger, we have lost our old cats and have new fur babies from the humane association, and life keeps taking loved ones as we age. Life everyday is a treasure. I appreciate how fortunate I am to live a creative maker life and thank you for supporting my work always!
