Bead n Butter an Interview by Jyanne

Introduction

Jessie Pruden is the amazing queer and disabled Métis artist behind the lovely business Bead n Butter! Bead n Butter is an online store that sells bright, bold, and unique handcrafted beaded jewelry that she designs and makes herself, with the help of her brother and friend!

Timeline

Jessie started their business back during the pandemic. She had become disabled before it started, which prevented her from working in the restaurant industry which was where she was working at the time. Because of this, she chose to go back to school where she took up a course in women, gender, and indigenous studies, though when the pandemic hit, her classes had to be turned online. The change didn’t work well with Jessie, online just wasn't working for her, so in the end she ultimately dropped out.

Around this time, Jessie also started taking up the craft of beading. She talked about how she had grown up around beading, watching one of her aunts do the craft, and how she was also motivated with the amount of bead work that was showing up on her social media. She felt like it was a good way to feel more connected to her family, since beading is a big part of her culture, while also getting the chance to make something nice for herself!

There was a lot of support from Jesse's friends and family to share her work, which ended up being the main drive to her starting her instagram page. Her page blew up almost instantly, gaining 5000 followers in 2 months, with her luck only increasing when only a year later she was invited to Paris fashion week and getting on the news due to her beading!

Nowadays, Jessie’s business is still on a roll, with her selling more products and even having some celebrities wear her stuff like famous tik toker Alexis Nichols, the black forager, and actor Chelsea Peretti! Currently, Jessie has a pride collection out, with fun and fabulous earrings available for purchase. She will also be flying to Toronto to participate in Indigenous fashion week, so stay tuned for that!

Products

Jessie started out making earrings, her first pair taking her more than 12 hours to make! To say her first pair wasn't up to her standards would be an understatement, but even through the ugly stages, she persisted and spent 12 hours a day working on perfecting her craft, and by the 1 month mark, she had made some pretty noticeable improvements!

When it comes to her process nowadays, Jessie talked about how a lot of her beading designs were actually based off of her friends and family, using their aesthetics and personalities as inspiration. The actual design process from start to finish begins with designing the concept of the jewelry. This is the longest part for her, since it’s a lot of planning out what colours to use, what shape it should be, and just overall figuring out how to make it both beautiful and not a pain to create. After creating the design, Jessie starts actually making it into a reality by sewing and beading! This process is also quite time consuming, with her also being disabled, this part of the process can take from 2 to 12 hours depending on the size of the earrings.

In the end though, it’s all worth it when she finally gets to see it all come together into a beautiful piece of wearable art!

Advice

At the end of our interview, I asked Jessie if they had any advice they could offer to those possibly wanting to start their own beading business, which they eagerly answered. Jessie's main advice was to know your value for both yourself and your products, keep your communities in mind, and to take risks.

We talked about how people in the arts are very under appreciated and how it’s important to price your products correctly, since under-pricing your products to satisfy others only adds to the issue at hand. This relates to keeping your communities in mind, since they will be the ones who will support you the most and show you the most love, so it’s important to remember who these people are and to try and support them in any way that you can.

Last but not least, Jessie ultimately encouraged taking risks and to make stuff happen for yourself! Waiting isn’t your only option, and if you're passionate about something, then you should work hard to make it happen! Not everything's going to be handed to you on a silver platter, so it’s also important to put in the work to make your dreams come true, so I think we should all strive to be like Jessie and kick fear in the butt and do what brings us joy!

Conclusion

Over all, I want to say a big thank you to Jessie for agreeing to have this interview with me! They're such an amazing human being and her products are just to die for! If you also enjoy bright and fun graphic beaded earrings, or just found this article interesting, I highly recommend you check out their store “Bead n Butter” and their instagram page @bead_n_butter!

I’ve learned so much from them and their story really moved me, so do me a favour and show them some love!

Article by Jyanne - MET School Student Intern