Some beads grow on trees

When people hear that I work with beads, they usually imagine glass.

I do love glass beads. Their colors, their sparkle and the endless possibilities they offer are a big part of my creative work.

But my interest in beads started long before I discovered glass.

As a child, I collected things. Seeds, nuts, interesting stones and anything that caught my attention during walks in nature. My grandmother had a large herb garden, and I grew up surrounded by plants and people who paid attention to the natural world.

Perhaps that is why, when I moved to Crete, I started noticing seeds.

Not as a botanist would notice them, but as someone fascinated by adornment.

Throughout history, people have decorated themselves with whatever was available around them. Long before glass beads, there were shells, bones, stones and seeds. The materials changed from place to place, but the desire remained the same.

To adorn.

To belong.

To remember.

To tell a story.

Over the years, I collected and experimented with many natural materials found on Crete. Some became jewellery, others simply remained beautiful objects on my desk. I was particularly fascinated by seeds such as Styrax and Job's Tears, known in Greece as the "Tears of the Virgin Mary."

One of my favourite memories is meeting an elderly woman in the mountains who was happy to share her knowledge of plants. Encounters like that reminded me that every seed carries more than botanical information. It carries stories, traditions and memories passed from one generation to the next.

What fascinates me most is the moment when a seed stops being just a seed.

A seed on a tree belongs to nature.

The same seed worn around someone's neck becomes adornment.

It becomes part of a person's identity, a memory of a place, a conversation starter, or simply something beautiful that feels worth carrying.

That is why I enjoy combining natural elements with handmade glass beads. One comes from nature, the other from fire. One grows slowly, the other is shaped by human hands. Together they tell a story about our long relationship with materials and our desire to transform them into something meaningful.

Whenever I find an unusual seed during a walk, I still feel the same curiosity I felt as a child.

Perhaps that is because some beads really do grow on trees.