About Me

Hui is pronounced as [Wh-E].

Through and through, I am an engineer.  I am a second generation Traffic Engineer.  But despite being raised in a family of engineers, my father always encouraged my bead habit and still points out bead stores to me.  ☺  I have been designing jewelry ever since I was 6 years old, with plastic hearts and plastic crystals on metallic stretchy string.  I spent my childhood creating my own coloring books with a copy machine and rubber stamps.  The one high school dance I attended, I made the necklace I was wearing in the photo.  My friends still have my “vintage” pieces that consisted of seed beads woven into flower chains, sometimes adorned with Czech glass beads for accent.  Later on, I progressed to stringing Swarovski crystals on stretchy string once again to strengthen my color skills.  I taught myself how to do simple wire-wrapping and started working more in depth with chain.  And then one fateful day in the fall of 2006, I picked up a bead magazine with a chainmaille project that caught my eye enough that I knew I needed to take a class on chainmaille.  Given my beading history of trial and error and self-teaching, I knew I couldn’t learn this by myself, so I signed up for a class.  And so began a new journey in my jewelry design.

Because of the analytical skills engineering has given me, chainmaille has been my calling.  It is a perfect marriage of the engineering and creative minds.  All those years of coloring butterflies and Teddy Ruxpin characters have finally paid off in my color design skills applied to my jewelry.  So to me, my designs aren’t meant to be worn today and then tossed aside tomorrow.  They are small treasures with a part of my soul embedded inside.  Treasures that can be passed down, generation to generation.  I fully admit that I am a metal snob.  I refuse to use anything less than solid copper and .925 sterling silver.  My crystal is 100% genuine Swarovski crystal imported directly from Austria.  To the best of my knowledge, none of my stones are dyed or chemically treated enough to alter any metaphysical properties.  My designs are uniquely my own that cannot be found in the mainstream jewelry market.  Every person who walks on this Earth is unique, so why shouldn’t their jewelry be unique as well?

If art really is a window into the soul, then my jewelry says I am strong, beautiful and sometimes whimsical.