beadladymanila

I am Angeli Del Rosario, polymer clay artist, craft teacher, writer, and homeschool mom from Manila, Philippines.

I have been in love with arts and crafts probably since I was happily swimming away in my mom's tummy. My mom is the original crafty lady - I get the craft crazies from her. I grew up in a home where creativity was encouraged. I remember trips to the craft store for some lace and ribbon. I remember snippets of fabric, bits of sequins, rolls of yarn and skeins of thread. I remember a thousand little projects that never seemed to end. I hopped from one craft to the next - crochet, embroidery, beading, sewing. Just about anything and everything my mom was into that time.

But my love affair with polymer clay didn't begin until I was 17, a college sophomore who had just rediscovered beading. I was bored with the usual selection of seed beads and semi-precious stones from the local bead stores. Being the bookworm that I was, weekends found me browsing through the craft section at the bookstore. On one fateful day, I stumbled upon a book on how to make your own beads. The book opened a whole new world of possibilities - I discovered I could make whatever bead color or style I wanted using different materials. One particular material caught my eye because of its brilliant colors. Unfortunately, the material was not readily available in the country. It took me six long months of bugging friends, hounding bookstores, and doing research before I found out where to buy the elusive thing called polymer clay. I dragged my cousin along with me to this now-defunct pottery shop where we bought our first bars of polymer clay in blue, green, and white. And the rest, as they say, is history.