My name is Frances Whited. I live in Northeast Ohio. My mom was a very creative stay-at-home mother so as kids my siblings and I always had plenty of art supplies to play around with and we were encouraged to dabble around with whatever caught our fancy. I always got "art" toys for Christmas -- a rock tumbler a spin art set an enameling kiln. One year it was a "paint it yourself" paper dress. Mom was a Cub Scout den mother and during one of the many bouts of tonsillitis that kept me home from school she taught me to weave on a bead loom (because beadwork was Native American that made it a suitably manly pursuit for Cub Scouts I guess) thus instilling my ongoing love of seed beads. Throughout my adult life I continued to dabble in just about every medium you can imagine but never really found anything that stuck. Then about five years ago I saw an ad for a class in freeform sculptural peyote stitch at a local bead store and asked my sisters to give the class for my birthday.When I took the class it was like the Beadwork Muse descended in a beam of light and embraced me. I was utterly hooked and so excited as I left the class that night with about one square inch of beadwork completed. I jumped into freeform work with absolute abandon. I entered my first juried arts and crafts show about six months later and have been going strong every since. About a year ago I began adding freeform bead embroidery to my repertoire as well. I truly love seed beads and beadweaving. Color is always where the design process starts for me and I look at tubes of seed beads with the same greedy enthusiasm with which I cracked open a fresh Crayola 64-Pack as a kid. I always work on pieces when I do shows and when people invariably comment�?¢ââEUR?¬�âEURoeThose tiny beads I'd go crazy" I invariably respond "It's my therapy." And it is. It's relaxing creatively fulfilling and has enabled me to achieve my lifelong goal of having as much jewelry as I want.