Leach makes career out of beads

Famous women have jewelry with Laura Leach’s beads.

The list includes first lady Laura Bush, actress Kate Bosworth and Christian singer Kathy Troccoli.

Locally, people can find some of Leach’s handcrafted lampwork beads at Main Street Bead Studio in downtown Fremont. Leach, a glass bead artist from Omaha, started working at the store in April. Her beads have been sold here for four years.

Some of Leach’s beads feature colorful swirling designs. Others have tiny flowers with vines. One recent afternoon, she opened a box to show her artistry. She has beads that look like an apple or a hot dog. Another curly bead resembles a friendly cartoon snake. One delicate bead depicts the scene of birds flying across the sky.

Then she displayed a bracelet with delicate beads that look like expensive chocolate candies.

“I like making these because I like chocolate,” she said.

Leach’s beadmaking began about eight years ago. Before that she ordered beads from eBay to make jewelry. Then her husband, Lane, signed her up for a hot glass bead-making class.

“I was so determined to succeed at this art. I thought it was fascinating,” she said. “I kept at it.”

Her artistic adventure took a different turn about five years ago. She was working part time at an insurance firm when a manager noticed her bracelet and asked where she got the beads.

He was amazed when Leach said she made them. His wife owned a jewelry company in Massachusetts, where they lived, and needed a bead maker.

That same day, Leach lost her job with the insurance firm. She began corresponding with Elizabeth Kissick, owner of EK Designs Co.

“She’d send me watercolor renderings of beads she liked and I interpreted her art into glass,” Leach said.

Since 2002, she’s been EK’s chief glass bead designer. Customers have included Bosworth. Leach sent a bracelet to the first lady and Troccoli received one after helping with a fundraiser for a jail ministry.

Leach’s Fremont connection comes via Sheryl Brown, owner of Fremont’s Main Street Bead Studio. Leach has her own Web site and calls her business, BEADazzling Designs. She works from a studio at her home.

Using a torch, she heats a bead and then a thin glass rod. She then paints the molten glass onto the bead.

It’s taken Leach years of classes and practice to create the tiny, delicate flowers depicted on her shiny beads today. One of these ornate beads can sell for $25. Someone making a piece of jewelry might use only one of these beads as the focal point. Her beads can range in price $3 to $40.

Leach’s favorite beads feature the small flowers. Her favorite colors are pink, purple and blue.

“My beads are true to what I really like,” she said. “Everything I make, I make for myself and if someone else likes it then that’s great.”

She’s also glad to do the work she enjoys.

“It’s been fun,” she said, adding, “God provided me a way to continue to work and to be available for my family.”

Her work slowed last year, however.

“I lost my dad (Richard Tryon) last year to cancer so I didn’t make a lot of beads and when I did I sat and cried,” she said.

But her art proved therapeutic.

“It was the time when I could sit and think while I was making beads,” she said.

These days, she says one of the hardest parts about bead making is having to stop.

“Once the torch is going and the DVD player is going with episodes of ‘The Office’ (television program), it’s hard to not keep going until midnight,” she said.

She continues to hone her artistic talents.

“Every class I take I build on what I do,” she said. “It helps mold me as an artist.”

And her artwork continues to intrigue her.

“To me every bead is an experiment and I call my self a mad scientist because I want to see what happens,” she said. “It’s fun.”