Katie Hacker, 31, is one of the country’s youngest but most prolific authorities on beading and the DIY jewelry making hobby. An artist and writer who started designing her own jewelry as a teenager when she couldn’t find fashionable clip earrings for her unpierced ears, she turned her pastime into a business and now provides her crafting advice to audiences across the country as the guest beading expert on the PBS series, Beads, Baubles & Jewels and through her 20 instructional beading booklets that have collectively sold more than 450,000 copies. Katie also is a contributing editor to Simply Beads magazine and freelances beading and craft projects to a variety of national publications.

Katie is passionate about demystifying jewelry making and specializes in projects that are fashionable and fun. Her approachable style helps new beaders feel less intimidated and more empowered. “Every beader is a designer, and I love helping people find their source of creativity through beads,” she says.

Katie discovered her creativity at an early age. She grew up in a unique crafty environment working for her parents’ miniatures and dollhouse distributorship, Dee’s Delights, Inc., where she spent her summers making dollhouse samples and working on the company’s communications materials. After graduating from college she worked as an editor, and eventually in-house designer, for Hot Off The Press, an instructional craft book publisher and scrapbooking paper manufacturer in Oregon. She also worked for several years at Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit organization that provides fair wages for artisans in developing countries by selling their goods in North America.

In 2001, Katie decided that she could make a living doing what she loved best—beading—so she and her husband, Craig Brown, moved back to their homestead in Keystone, Indiana. She helps Craig raise organic vegetables and meat on the 100-year-old family farm and sells them at area farmers markets, while also keeping the farm’s honeybees. (Website: www.brownfamilyfarm.com).

Katie decided to introduce her passion for beading to an even wider audience and pairs with Interweave Press in April 2006 to publish Hip to Bead: 32 Contemporary Projects for Today’s Beader. Loaded with gorgeous, boutique-style beaded jewelry, Katie’s book teaches basic beading techniques through fashion-savvy designs created with beads, pendants, and findings that are readily available.