My name is Julia Pretl. I live in Baltimore City with my husband, two daughters, a dog and a cat. My favorite things are web design, knitting and woodworking but most of all I love beads...
I have been an "artist" for as long as I can remember. As a kid I'd
collect anything and everything I might use to "make things"... pinecones, paper towel tubes, shoeboxes,
rocks, deflated balloons, moss, many sheets of paper and a whole lot of scotch tape. Nothing was without
possibilties. I studied art throughout grammar and high school before majoring in graphic design at the
Maryland Institute College of Art. Ironically, I quit midway through my senior year because it was
becoming "too computerized".
Shortly before I left school, I had a boyfriend who was in a play
where he portrayed a Native American. When I learned that his costume included no beadwork, I was stunned
at the director's lack of attention to detail so I set out to make a bead loom and then to learn how to
use it. By showtime he had a beaded patch for his vest and a beaded bag for his arrows.
I beaded on a loom for the next year or two until my
loomwork became larger and more intricate and I decided it was time to learn something new. At this point
(around 1991) beadwork was becoming popular and a couple of beadstores had appeared in Baltimore.
One day, I spied a tiny, peyote-stitched amulet pouch on the wall of one of these stores. I studied it for about an hour before going home
to figure out how it had been done. Soon after, I found Virginia Blakelock's Those Bad, Bad Beads
and I was hooked.
In 1999 I acquired a computer and, soon after, discovered the internet. Realizing that I
finally had a way to merge my graphic design background and my beadwork, I photographed my work and found a free
what-you-see-is-what-you-get webpage editor and put my work online. Unsatisfied with the result, I
searched around until I found an HTML forum online.
After a while, I realized that I was no longer happy beading. There was
not much of a beadwork scene in Baltimore and I was lonely. I decided to scrap it all and become a web
designer. I spent a lot of time on the HTML forum, learning and practicing. One night I was bored and I
decided to follow some of the signature links. I think I went from a web design forum... to an art forum...
through several craft forums... anyway, it's not hard to guess where I ended up. There were beaders online!
Lots of them! I was home.
