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Just a bit about me...

Margaret Braet

I was an only child. Without other children to play with, I was given paper, crayons, clay... most any art supply to keep myself entertained. I would sit and draw for hours. I wanted to learn to carve wood, but my hands were small and my mother wouldn't let me have a knife (something about safety...), so I tried my hand at carving candles with butter knives. They were "primitive" at best, but my fifth grade teacher really seemed to appreciate the owl that I carved for her.

My other hobby was rock collecting. I had always picked up interesting stones from the landscaping of restaurants and shiny gravel pieces from parking lots. But by junior high school, I was collecting cabochons and facetted gems from our local rock shop.

It was in ninth grade that I took my first jewelry class. We learned basic wire work, which was nice. We learned to enamel, which was even nicer. But then we learned to cast. It was just simple gravity casting in pewter, but I thought it was just so cool.

But then... high school, and my life would be forever carved in... wax? I took a jewelry class my sophomore year and I was told that, "If you can carve it into wax, you can cast it into metal". All of those poor candles hadn't been mutilated for nothing after all and I began to design mountings for stones in my growing collection.

I graduated high school in 1983 and I have been collecting, designing, and creating ever since.

I still live in Kansas City, with Jeff, my other half, and our three dogs, Kyrie, Scarlett, and the "puppy", a 75 pound chow/akita mix (a "chiquita"), named Ursa.

I have a wax working table, a jeweler's bench, and a drawing table in my studio. I'm also branching out into glass work, and stone cutting, which are taking over the basement. Though I now spend a lot of time at the computer, I still keep crayons and markers on hand, with lots of paper. And, I still sit and draw for hours.