Kathy Kostinsky is one of the newest designers at Sova-Enterprises.com. I love her realistic, very detailed butterflies. She really pays a lot of attention to detail!

 
Kathy was born in 1974 in Moscow into a family of geologists. She grew up near a forest and spent a lot of time exploring nature with her mom. While Kathy was in school, she met some wonderful teachers who taught her not only the academic subjects but more importantly loving life. In her after-school years, Kathy learned linguistics, Judaics, and embroidery, and at last became a teacher of Russian and Literature, although she has been teaching English since she finished school.
 

Kathy's family now consists of her husband, two girls and a boy. They live in a suburb of Moscow, in a flat in a 9-story house. Nearby, there is a narrow river, a small apple orchard and a small mountain. Kathy's family walks to the river almost every day. While at the river, Kathy teaches her eldest daughter as part of her home schooling. She also teaches other different children at home.
 

Sampling of Kathy's Designs:
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Kathy's Mom learned beading from Kathy's grandmother. In turn, Kathy learned from her mom. She learned how to make small flowers with one thread and one needle. Then she and her mom created some of their own designs. For example, they strung up of about a meter of beads on a wire and winded this wire around a long pencil. This "spring" became a bracelet.
 

When Kathy was 16, her mom found some bead classes and Kathy decided to attend. She found the classes to be wonderfully interesting and loved it learning, except that she didn't like to make other people's designs. Soon after finishing the six-month course, Kathy started creating her own designs. Kathy says that her first collar became her greatest beaded disappointment. It was a really beautiful wide collar made of gold bugles and seed beads. The collar looked like an ancient Egyptian collar. Kathy spent two weeks weaving the collar. When it was done, Kathy gave it to her mom as a birthday present. But, as she had not been very attentive at the bead class, she did not fasten the threads properly. When her mom wore the collar, the beads and bugles spilled onto the grass! Since then, Kathy has learned to weave more "carefully and accurately".
 

Sampling of Kathy's Designs:
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
 
                   

 

Kathy is very proud of her loomed portraits and butterflies. Looming is Kathy's favorite technique. She invented a very simple weaver's loom for looming that eliminates the ends of the warp threads. As a result, she says it becomes a real pleasure to loom complicated forms. Kathy also loves 3D weaving. She says it's so exciting to invent new forms.
 

Kathy is most inspired by nature, folk ornaments and her children. She claims that she is especially inspired when she is pregnant. While pregnant with her son, she wove more than 50 big butterflies.
 

The bead artists that Kathy admires most include Rebecca Brown, Karen Paust, Margie Deeb, Gail Be, David Chatt and Boris Melnikov. Boris Melnikov embroiders huge and very true-looking bead icons for the Orthodox Church. His bead icons look like real wood-painted ones.
 

Kathy read an article written by by Tatiana Zakharova about how she began making money creating patterns for Bead-Patterns.com. Inspired, she joined Bead-Patterns.com about 1 year after having read the article. She created a collection of about 50 butterflies (American, European, Australian, Asian and African) especially for Bead-Patterns.com.
 

Sampling of Kathy's Butterfly Designs:
Click on an image to view the pattern information.
 
                   
 

Kathy also hopes to make some collections of adornments with different folk ornaments (Russian, Celtic, & Indian) and enlarge her collection of beaded butterflies. She also hopes to create bead patterns reflecting different handicrafts: embroidery, lace, filigree, and wood carving.
 

Kathy's most loved work: