Support Ukrainian bead artists!
It happened around the time when I started going to school. The winters used to be harsh, and the lake in our village remained frozen for months. I was learning how to ice-skate, slowly getting braver and more confident. It was my grandma who was with me that day, although, it’s hard to imagine now that she would have gone on the ice, even if wearing boots instead of blades. In my memory, she’s fragile and tiny, but of course, she must have been a lot more sure-footed back then.
I enjoyed cutting patterns into the hard surface of the lake with my skates, but the eyes of grandma where fixed on the white marks on the sky instead of mine: she was concerned by seeing so many airplanes once again in her life. The iron curtain has just fallen, and we were finally at the dawn of freedom, opening up, and ready for happier times, but for her, the planes brought back memories from half a century ago, when instead of summer holidays they meant fear and destruction.
We stopped for a little while to count the contrails,
and I collected all my courage to ask: “Will there be war again?”
She said no. She told me that the world is different now, and we’ll always be safe. I can’t tell if she truly believed her own words… But I trusted her, not only when she was pointing me towards the thicker parts of the ice, but also with how the future will look like.
About 30 years after that day on the lake, airplanes, tanks, and people fleeing to save their lives and loved ones are on the move again. Many of them are finding shelter in the country where I grew up – Slovakia. Some missiles fall as close as 150 km (less than 100 miles) from our Eastern border. Some of my friends are organising collections and driving across the country to bring food, warm clothing, sanitary products to the exhausted people arriving from Ukraine, and thousands are joining the protests against aggression all over the world. A dark shadow is creeping, and this is our turn to stop it.
I trust us that we can do it.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
People fleeing the war need finances. They need to buy fuel, food, recharge their phones, use the internet, and so much more. With the help of beaders in the Beadingschool Club and beyond I collected a list of Ukrainian creatives. If you know anyone else, please let me know in a comment so I can expand this list!
If you can spare any money, please, buy a tutorial. Sending a finished piece is problematic (or impossible) these days, so electronic files are the best option. Some shops are closed at the moment, please check back from time to time to see if they managed to re-open, and keep supporting them. If there’s a special deal, please consider purchasing more than one tutorial.
Beaded Earrings Kits (tutorials, too, not only kits)
If it’s not possible at the moment for you two give financial support, please, help with talking about freedom, democracy, and human rights. As simple as beading something in the colours of the Ukrainian flag (blue and yellow) and posting a picture on social media can lift the spirit of someone.
My heart goes out to everyone suffering from this situation.
Erika and the Beadingschool Team
Elina Ivanova is another artist
Thank you Rebecca! I see her Etsy shop is closed, I will look if it’s possible to find her art elsewhere.
It looks like you have a couple spelling errors on your website such as the word “jewellery”. Check out a service like SpellAce.com to help. We’ve used it in the past and liked it.
Thank you for your comment, Randy! We’ve been using Grammarly for correcting purposes. It’s set to British English as this is the one we’ve studied at school 😉
Your story touched me, as I am a refugee as well. I bought some patterns,
Yoz had a brilliant udea, not only to send money but get to know people with the same passion and appreciate their work.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your support to these artists, Iris! I’m sorry that you had to flee… I was born under Soviet occupation of my country, but luckily, I didn’t have to run, it ended a few years after I was born. Still, I grew up with stories and memories from those times…
I have two on Etsy that I really like: MarriVirraPatterns and ShiboriCraft. Both are from Kyiv and have reached out with messages that they are donating money they receive.
Hi Laura, can you please help me with posting the links to these shops? I tried to find them so I can add them to the article but I couldn’t 🙁
Such a fabulous post, thanks for sharing. I’ve also supported
Dragonfly Earrings – Marine
be_be_cool – Galina
…and now I got some more.
I’ve purchased several, as you suggested I got a couple of package deals.
Ulla you are awesome!!!
I purchased frozen m Galiga Patterns on Etsy.
Hi Vicky, can you please help with a link? I’d love to add more Ukrainian bead artists to this list but can’t find her.