Alexandra Lysenko

Snow Mirna

Her name has resounded throughout the world of bead and seed bead costume jewellery for a number of years.

She admittedly did not graduate from any art school, but she has been designing for a number of years and she also makes her own jewellery and lectures at costume jewellery workshops.

Her pieces are made under the Snow Mirna brand which, as she herself says, is also her second name.

She enjoyed manual work when at school. However, she received the main foundation for her skills from her family. Her grandmother taught her how to embroider and crochet and her mother taught her to knit and sew. She then added the frilling technique to these skills at school. She began using beads while at secondary school when her friend taught her how to make sewn bracelets from small beads. These bracelets were her first pieces of costume jewellery. This was the beginning of her love of beads. She still has the very first bracelet she ever made.

After a relatively long break brought about by a lack of time during her studies at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev (the National Technical University of Ukraine), she returned to beadworking after her completing studies and moving to the Czech Republic. She was inspired by the accessibility of a plentiful range of interesting costume jewellery components, but also by the availability of high quality Czech beads and seed beads. Since 2009, beadwork has overtaken her life and she now devotes every free moment to her hobby. Since that time, she has received a number of awards in costume jewellery competitions and her work can now be found in the pages of significant magazines devoted to costume jewellery design. Her precise seed bead necklaces created using a fine embroidery technique are especially renowned.