We have great Bead Classes

Andrea Mazzenga, RN, is a wife, mother, grandmother, and lampwork artist. She owns and operates Buttercup Beads. She opened her physical store in 2007 and decided to close it due to the Covid pandemic in 2019. Since closing her Audubon location, she devotes most of her time and attention to building and maintaining her new little online bead store. 

Art has always played a large role in her life, and she enjoys many other artistic avenues such as painting, needle felting, photography, and poetry. 

She was pulled to her love of everything beads with her first glass flameworking class over 17 years ago. In 2007, she decided to leave medicine for sparkly things, and hasn’t looked back. She has taught her designs at BeadFest and has been published multiple times in both Bead & Button, and BeadWork magazines. 

In 2017, her projects were also featured in Creative Beading, Vol. 12 – The best projects from a year of Bead & Button Magazine. Andrea believes that everyone should take the time to explore their creative passions because it makes for a happy and satisfying life.  She offers a wide variety of bead classes in almost all beading techniques. Her students thinks she's an extremely patient teacher and only smacks their fingers with a ruler when it's absolutely necessary and they don't pay attention. (eh, 12 yrs of catholic schooling....)

She continues to design and offer kits and patterns on the website. Private classes are again being offered in her home studio. She is very grateful to all her loyal customers and friends she's made over the years and looks forward to the challenge of Buttercup Beads 2.0

Carlie is Andrea's youngest daughter who was a mainstay at the physical store until Covid hit. Her main job now is keeping little Billy and her new set of twins happy and healthy.

She was our resident independent artist and often helped create new patterns and samples as time allowed. 

Our customers considered her to be the "Mixmastercolorcoordinator" at Buttercup Beads. Her innate sense of color palettes are somewhat of a mystery to all who know her, and we don't care.  When you are looking for that certain blue mystery bead, Carlie will surely help find it for you, or you risk her smacking your hands for sticking with the colors that you had already picked...

Gina Struebel is a juried member of the Reading/Berks chapter of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen. She specializes in one of-a-kind sculpted and woven wire art jewelry. Her pieces are inspired by nature and created to highlight the beauty of natural gemstones. She uses many different gauges of wire and cold fusion and sometimes incorporates beading techniques such as coiling, weaving, wrapping and sculpting wire into beautiful one of kind wearable art jewelry. Her jewelry is handmade using natural gemstone and bead components, artisan custom cut cabochons, and copper, bronze, silver or gold wire along with handmade charms and findings. Her pieces have an elegant blend of traditional and contemporary designs, some delicate, some big and bold.

She has been passionate about the arts all her life. We are thrilled to have Gina on our team. You will certainly have fun and wear something beautiful home at the end of one of her wire and/or  bead classes.

Unfortunately, her classes are currently on hold due to the Coronavirus pandemic.