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Ankars jewelry, beaded jewelry, tatting patterns, crafts and handworks

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How can you learn new needlecraft without rising from your armchair and how can you creatively underline your individuality and charm?

Hello! At first let's get to know earth other!

My name is Irina Astratenko. I design adornments of beads, tatting lace and I also enjoy all kinds of needlework. It seems to me that beads have some mysterious magic – small shining glasses, joined one to another by a simple thread, by some miracle they can charm the heart for many years. And the charmed are always lucky, so I am lucky too. This is a short story about my adventures in needlework. Traveling to different cities and countries I have found many amazing masters who became my tutors.

The main principle I was taught by Oleg Auzer – the most famous jeweler from Latvia – was creative approach. He didn't just teach me jeweler's craft, he developed an unusual approach to everything hands can do. I was taught patience and love to beads by Svetlana Shironina, my first guide in beadwork. Svetlana brought this passion from Yakutia. The first lessons are always very hard – at the beginning hands are like wooden, they don't want to listen to their owner. Many hours of training are required. Only then you can wonder that fine work starts going well, very easy and smooth.

I was taught professionalism by a great toiler Inna Ranneva from St. Petersburg (Russia). This wonderful woman has been in bead art for almost 40 years already. Taught by the oldest masters of the beginning of last century, Inna wasn't just sharing her experience with her students; besides this she was creatively developing the art of beadwork forward, being the first one to overstep the limits of traditions. It is worthy that the St. Petersburg 's school of beadwork is so famous!

Of course, this wasn't enough for me! Once, when I found out that lace can be decorated with beads… I decided to learn making it myself! And once the long forgotten ancient art of tatting became fashionable again, as by the wave of magic wand, I found a new tutor Olga Rayko from Latvia who taught me the basics of tatting. It wasn't all that simple, again my wooden hands were learning new moves in order to be able to cope with unusual tasks with sleight of a hand. And I succeeded!

Then I was even luckier, because I met the most wonderful master and the greatest expert in tatting – Ekaterina Stepnaja from Moscow.

This great needlewoman taught me the new technique Ankars, which Ekaterina Stepnaja created in cooperation with other masters of her workshop. The evidence of my words is the quantity of diplomas and awards presented to Ekaterina and her workshop.

I hope that my adventures in needlework will continue, because I am never standstill and I once again dream about new needlework – the bead techniques anyone has hardly ever heard about!

  So what was the result? You can see all the things my hands have ever created here. My earliest works, as well as the most recent are represented there.

Now I also teach everybody willing the things I can do myself. If you are interested to find out how you can learn everything I had learnt during my adventures, moreover, not rising from your warm armchair, read further.

How can you learn needlecraft without rising from your armchair?

A little patience! Let us think about :

What do you need this for in general?

In order to answer this question I want to tell you one preaching story from real life of my teacher – a very talented and famous jeweler Oleg Auzer from Latvia. Oleg directs a jeweler's college in Riga. Several years ago his workshop was robbed very seriously. A wonderful vase made by common work of many jewelers was stolen – it wasn't just 11 kilograms of silver, it was enormous job – 10000 single solderings. If only you knew how difficult it was to create it, you see – before making each new soldering the whole vase had to be heated in order to make a long-lasting joint. No wonder that the auction value of this vase was estimated by the figure with unimaginable big amount of zeros!

What will happen to a looser in such situation? It's not hard to guess that he will mourn over his loss for the rest of his life, as faithful wife after dead husband.

But Oleg is not like that. I first met him after that robbery. It was fantastic! Oleg has even grown younger! In his 50 he looked like 35, he was proud as a mountain eagle and was burning with enthusiasm as the flame of the big camp-fire! Here is what Oleg told me:

“There are values which can easily be lost. But there are also values which one can never loose! House can burn down or collapse because of old age, money will melt away as if you didn't have it, but my hands will always be with me! And I will always be able to start from nothing and do everything I have learnt!”

This is when it became clear:

The most precious values a man can have – are his skills

I promised to tell you how you can gain new skills which I have learnt myself traveling to different cities and countries, and you won't have to get up from your warm and comfy armchair. If you are interested on the next page I will tell you:

- Why is it profitable to you?

 

 
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