This Kaimukī Shop Helps Customers Make Their Own Jewelry
Brendan and Jill Barry’s Bead It! is stocked with jewelry-making materials and offers classes in soldering, drilling and other techniques.
Husband-and-wife Brendan and Jill Barry share a passion for jewelry-making, which led them in 1992 to open a craft store, Bead It!
“It’s a meditative practice. Putting beads on the string, we have to slow down and focus. We get to put ourselves into that flow type of state. So that’s a huge benefit,” Brendan Barry says.
Located in Kaimukī, Bead It! stocks hundreds of jewelry-making materials and helps patrons create their own unique pieces. On a visit to the store, I carefully selected my beads and then the staff helped me create my charm bracelet.
Bead It! also offers classes that teach the fundamentals of jewelry-making, including wiring, knotting, drilling, bezeling and soldering. Jill Barry says students “always leave with a finished product.”
Brendan Barry says his favorite moments are right when a piece is completed, when he sees customers “light up with the success of their own creation.”
