About the Artist
click to view business card
Sarah Breggin has been an artist all her life. She has
pursued many hobbies over the years including bead looming, other jewelry making
(leather, wire, and hemp), dream catchers, leatherworking (tooling & dying
leather), beaded key chains, rug crochet, paper bead making, and pool cue inlay
design. Other more traditional visual arts have also been at the heart of
Sarah's life: collage, graphic arts, painting (mural and canvas), drawing
(charcoal, graphite, colored pencil), and poetry and story writing.
Today Sarah lives in Bellingham, WA and is graduating soon
with a Computer Science degree from Western Washington University. Being a
computer scientist, she also built this website and photographed and edited all
imagery seen here.
She also designed the business card shown above.
About the Barrettes
I started making barrettes after being disappointed with
every barrette in the store. Most barrettes just slide right out of my hair. Plus they look so plain and
ugly (brown plastic, anyone?). I am a big fan of leather work
and would probably wear traditional stick barrettes (you know, the kind you can
buy kits for and "tool" them yourself) if they would stay in my hair.
Traditional stick barrettes are enormous, common, and plain. The solution?
Invent my own kind of stick barrette.
Each barrette is made with genuine leather (salvaged from high quality
industrial end pieces), golf tees (3.25" or 2.75"), and hand selected
beads (porcelain, copper, silver, glass, and imitation materials). The parts are
assembled with high quality crafting wire. Wire ends are always tucked inside of
the beads so that they don't catch on your hair. Best of all: they are modern,
beautiful, and STAY on normal, everyday people's hair!
Thick hair? Pull back just the sides.
Normal hair? Wear it any way you like!
Fine hair? Use a hair tie underneath to make it STAY ALL DAY. I Promise! This is
my hair type and I speak from experience.
Why golf tees? (Most people don't even notice, by the way.) See
a close-up.
- Cupped end works perfectly for holding a beautiful matching bead to
compliment the barrette base
- Smooth finish slides smoothly through hair and never catches or splinters
- Nice colors
- Pre-manufactured, perfect every time (no guess work!)
About the Lace-ups
The lace-ups mostly speak for themselves. I have seen these in a few places,
usually for much more than I am charging. Also the ones I encountered seemed to
be too gaudy (rainbow ribbon, etc.) and had little choice of color. I try to
provide a wide variety of colors and leather types. The elastic
cord comes in 10 different colors. Elastic also works very well for fine
hair (like mine).
I am most proud of the latigo
lace-ups, though. These are great for the biker
ponytail sleeve look or indian braids.
They are so easy to put in yet look so wonderful. Lots of natural beauty with
wood beads on latigo leather.
I also love the french pony style of
wearing lace-ups. I can NOT braid my own hair for the life of me. I am a hair
dummy. For years I did nothing with my hair, not even a pony tail. But these are
so easy that all of the lace-up styles you see on the page were done by me on
the first try. The french pony is so easy and looks so beautiful. I am so happy
to finally have a solution to my clumsiness with hair. It really is easy.
Thanks
I need to thank a few people whose help made this business possible. Thank
you to
- Don for promoting my products like they were his own
- Donna for being my first customer
- Debbie and Elizabeth for allowing me to photograph their beautiful hair
while wearing my products
- Elaine for giving moral support and business advice
- Dan for helping me shop for just the right materials (and inventing the
golf tee method)
- And last but not least my Mother for always believing in me and inspiring
me to build this website
