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About Us
Born and raised in Germany, Vera came to the United States in 1990, and has lived in the Santa Cruz, California area ever since. For many years, she has enjoyed the Arts, the creativity and the sharing that comes along with it. In early 2003 Vera was introduced to the wonderful medium of glass and the making of handcrafted glass beads.

Her colorful and unique handcrafted glass beads are beautiful small pieces of art that fit into the palm of a hand. They are spectacular treats to the eye, and truly irresistible to the touch.

All the magnificent and unique glass beads featured in Vera’s bracelets, earrings, pendants, necklaces and other exclusive jewelry are handcrafted lampworked/flameworked beads made and designed at Vera’s Design studio in Santa Cruz, California. Vera forms and manipulates differently colored glass rods such as soft Moretti glass from Italy (originated from the Island of Murano near Venice), harder Borosilicate glass, or even glass obtained from fine wine or champagne bottles in front of a very hot torch. She lovingly wraps and hand-winds the molten glass around a specially prepared metal mandrel. Each unique glass bead is made one at a time, thus no 2 beads are exactly the same. This process creates a truly unique and one of a kind handcrafted glass bead. Once the beads have reached the desired shape and size they go through an annealing period inside a kiln for lasting strength and longevity. The annealing process lasts for several hours. During that time the working temperature of up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit in front of the flame, and approximately 945 degrees Fahrenheit inside the kiln is very slowly reduced back to room temperature. Once cooled sufficiently, Vera carefully removes each bead off the mandrel, cleaning and inspecting them to ensure only the highest quality. The beads are then ready to be strung and combined with other design elements into wearable pieces of art jewelry. As Vera is an experienced scuba diver, the beautiful Monterey Bay waters, the sand and nature’s surroundings influence her design inspiration for color, shape and spacers. So she incorporates the use of shells, freshwater pearls and coral in her jewelry. These, along with other findings, such as oblong fresh water pearls from Japan, round fresh water pearls from Asia, sterling silver antiqued spacer beads from Bali, as well as precious and semi-precious gem-stones from New Mexico, Germany, India and the China Sea are to be found in Vera’s designs.

Bracelets are the jewelry pieces Vera feels especially drawn to because “wearing a bracelet you can proudly look at it all day long”.

Vera’s Design jewelry cannot only be found in California, but also in Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Utah. Internationally her design jewelry has found proud owners in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Africa and now also in White Russia.

Come and own your own piece of wearable art to treasure for years to come!