Ornamentea is your home for fine craft ingredients and inspiration. We strive to offer the most interesting 'parts' for your creations and we do it in an environment that is welcoming and encouraging. Our 'real' store is located in Raleigh, North Carolina and our virtual store is open 24 hours a day on your screen. You can visit us by sitting at our work table, joining us early on a Friday morning for Breakfast & Beads, coming to a class or by downloading one of our free jewelry making and beading tutorials any time.
Ornamentea began as Bedizen Ornaments jewelry design, started by Cynthia Deis in the kitchen of a tiny pink house in Raleigh, North Carolina. Cynthia loved making pretty accessories out of vintage buttons, antique copper chain and hand dyed ribbons and she shared her creations with the world under the trade name, Bedizen. She began selling her work to one local boutique in 1995 and within a year found herself in Manhattan, taking orders from boutiques and catalogs all around the world. Beads and trims filled the pink house and her patient husband saw his back yard draped in ribbon drying from a fresh dye bath and his bathroom sink filled with chain soaking to remove years of accumulated gunk before being fashioned into some thing new and pretty. The cats slept on the shipping boxes; the delivery guy learned that if no one answered the door he could walk around back and see the entire staff having a meeting on the back porch. The business soon outgrew that kitchen counter and moved to a little studio in downtown Raleigh. Cynthia still walked to work, but now she needed to wear shoes.