About Leslie
 

Leslie Rogalski is an artist, teacher, and media personality with a passion for creating beaded jewelry and more. She has been a regular on Jewelry Television, a featured guest on the U.K. show Jewellery Maker, and has an online class for Craftsy called Five Essential Seed Bead Stitches. Leslie also appeared in the PBS TV series Beads, Baubles, and Jewels for many years. She continues to share the joys of making jewelry in her current position as Creative Director for The BeadSmith, a global wholesaler of all things beady. Her designs and videos are offered on their beadsmith.com website, and on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

The former editor of Step by Step Beads and BeadingDaily.com, Leslie’s designs and articles have been widely published. Her best-selling DoodleBeads DVDs teach the top seed-bead techniques in a unique drawing-before-your-eyes method she uses in class, too. By no means limiting her work to seed beads, Leslie’s original jewelry designs have been published in Beadwork, Step by Step Beads, Creative Jewelry, Step by Step Wire Jewelry, 101 Wire Earrings, Easy Wire, Chain Style, and more.

Leslie joined with her sister Deb Mudrick in 2012 to form Sleepless Beader, selling her designs and kits online. After years of workshops at bead shows and bead related venues around the country, they put Sleepless Beader to bed, but tutorials are for sale as downloads on this web site.

Leslie is a Master Artisan of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen and her local chapter, the Haverford Guild of Craftsmen.

Artist Statement

To call what I do my “work” is a misnomer.  I play. There is no other way to describe how I bring materials together into jewelry and other art forms. It’s just too much fun to call it work. I’m inspired by many things but my style seems to be geometric, usually symmetrical, minimal, organized, and with an ethnic flavor. I am juiced by the designs of many cultural styles, including Africa, Egypt, and Japan.

Inspiration comes to me in a duality of geometric shapes and ancient texture. I find possibilities in combining beadwork with wire, metal, plastic, rubber, wood, resin, and found objects. My signature palettes are earthy colors with black, naturals and metallics, majestic greens, purples and coppers, or dramatic contrasts using black and white with red or turquoise.