Dear friends! My name is Kathy Kostinsky, I live in Israel.
Since 1991 I’ve been beading professionally (and of about 8 years before it just for fun, with my mom, sitting in the kitchen and listening to detective radio plays. And my mom had been taught in her childhood by her mom). In 2001 I was in Crimea with my daughter. Sure, I took some beads with me, just in case. One night I was sitting in the kitchen (you see, a kitchen is the most creative place for former-Soviet people) and thinking what interesting thing I could weave if I had only golden and black beads with me. And I realized that the time for weaving my first butterfly had come. I had used to loom bead pictures with butterflies before, but Iwas a bit afraid of making a peyote stitch bead thing of such a complicated shape. But that wonderful night I decided to stop being afraid and just try. I draw a pattern of an unexisting butterfly with long tails on the lower wings (like Papilio machaon) and in a few hours the butterfly was ready. I loved the result so much that after returning from Crimea to Moscow (we lived in Moscow then) I began searching books about butterflies, drawing patterns and weaving and sometimes looming different butterflies of the world.
In 2009, being pregnant with my third baby, I decided to make a huge collection of butterflies, all in one technique and one height. It took several months to find the butterflies I wanted and to make patterns for them. And then – every day I spent 12 hours on weaving a butterfly. Thus, the first collection – 50 butterflies of the world, appeared. But the process has appeared to be unstoppable, and I continued making other butterflies collections.
All in all, during these 23 years I’ve made more than 210 butterflies and moths of more than 115 species.
And I’m glad and proud to show you here 174 butterflies and moths of 132 different species.
Most of them have patterns which are placed at Bead-Patterns.com
And if a butterfly or a moth here, at my web-site, has a sellable pattern, you can see a link to the pattern on the page of that butterfly or moth.
I’ve been not only beading but also teaching beading for a very long time. And once I saw an animated bead pattern. It had inspired me so much that I began making my own beading cartoons showing different beading techniques. You can see these cartoons here, too. There cartoons show 12 main beading techniques including 35 variations of them. And 72 beading adornments can be done following these cartoons. Among them 3 real butterflies and 37 unreal butterflies.
My study of butterflies also led me to water-colour painting some butterflies. And these paintings will appear here, too.
I hope you’ll enjoy studying butterflies and moths with me here, at beadbutterflies.com