Ninde' Designs is two sisters who have developed a passion for creating beautiful jewelry.  Some people just know what they want to be.  Some are lucky enough to accidentally discover it.  Some go through their entire life and never find it out.  For my sister and me it has been a long journey.

Mary Klun

I have always enjoyed using my hands to create.  I was always "messing" with something- watercolors, sewing my own clothes, trying every craft that came my way.   But I never imagined myself as an artist and looked somewhere else to find out what I was meant to be.

I went to college in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  I got a B.S. in Elementary Education, met my husband and when we graduated we got jobs and got married and eventually started a family.  We moved north, north, north again until we finally ended up in Superior, Wisconsin on the shores of Gitchee Gammie.

Yet still, always, between the work, the PTA meetings, having fun with my three children, I found time to work with my hands. I made cloth dolls, primitive paintings, making a new Santa every year from many different materials, and eventually, the Santas led me to polymer clay. I'd always lingered long at craft shows admiring the jeweler's work and wanted to make my own jewelry but short of some macramé necklaces it always seemed beyond my knowledge and abilities. Polymer clay opened up the possibilities to create jewelry.   

I probably would have played with clay for quite a while, but one day while searching for a solution to a problem I was having with a project, I found the Lapidary Journal website ( http://www.lapidaryjournal.com/ ).One of the projects shown was a bangle made of sterling silver wire by San Diego artist, Connie Fox.  It intrigued me.  It fascinated me. I read the article over and over and knew I was going to try to make that bangle. I visited Connie's website (http://www.conniefox.com/ ), devoured her tutorials, and discovered that she taught classes. Guess where our next vacation was? I convinced my husband to vacation in San Diego, so I could take a class from Connie Fox.   

Since then I have taken classes from Lisa Claxton, Louise Duhamel, Sondra Busch, Celie Fago, Lisa Niven Kelly and Mary Hettmansperger.  Each of these artists have shown me a new way to look at my work. 

“It’s never to late to be what you were meant to be,”  is a quote on an Anne Choi bead that I have used in a bangle for myself. It is my inspiration. My children have grown and left the nest. My husband, our Standard Poodle and I have the place to ourselves now and I am thinking how lucky I am that I finally found what I was meant to be.

Susan Baez

Like me, my sister Susan has always loved using her hands and creating beautiful things.  She developed a very strong interest in all things textile related.  She made her own striking clothes, embroidered, crocheted and knit.

Susan married right after high school and started a family not long after.  They moved to Madison, Wisconsin so her husband could get his degree.  She stayed home with her daughter and was involved in her daughter's school, gardening and raising her daughter.  Yet she found time to work on her many artistic talents.  Family members looked forward to the handmade gifts she would frequently give.  When her daughter got older she returned to school and got her B.S. in Interior Design and began working for an office design company.  She was a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers.

Susan and her daughter moved back to Madison when she and her husband divorced.  There she met her current husband.  Susan continued her love of textile related arts and learned basket weaving.  She also began working with watercolors. Like me she dabbled with making jewelry and when I began falling in love with the process she started  exploring her jewelry interests more and was soon hooked.  She has taken classes from Lisa Claxton, Lisa Niven Kelly, Mary Hettmansberger.  Now that her daughter is grown and moved out she continues to live in Madison with her husband and Labrador Retriever.  Like me, she has discovered joy in creating beautiful works of wearable art.  Susan is another artist who has found, "It's never to late to be what you were meant to be."

                                   Mary and Rick                                                                  Susan and Doug