Learning about orphans, foster children and children's homes through beads

Jewelry with a cause
Artist's bead creations raise awareness
Meiman, Karen. Cincinnati Post, April 23, 2007, pg. B1.

Inside the basement of her Richwood, Ky., home, May Tagher patiently slices delicate slivers of ornately decorated polymer clay. Each sliver with its minuscule image will be wrapped around a clay bead. One by one, she produces up to 300 beads a day.

Some of these tiny designs are created by orphans, by foster children, and by youth suffering from spinal cord tumors.

Sometimes the art themes are colorful stick figures, sometimes ribbons that proclaim a cause, such as breast cancer awareness. Sometimes the art is of school mascots, logos of nonprofit organizations or primitive self-portraits. Often Tagher comes up with a design herself.

agher bakes -- or cures -- the pierced beads twice, strings them into bracelets, necklaces, earrings, watchband and key fobs that raise awareness and money for local organizations. Pieces range in price from $10 to $100.

The Diocesan Catholic Children's Home of Northern Kentucky, Malia's Cord Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation of Kentucky are just a few of the causes for which Tagher's pieces have raised money.

"Oh, I love it," says Tagher, putting on her glasses so she can view the cutting process under a bright light. "What I love to do is incorporate the children's artwork into my pieces. That is giving the children the attention."

Tagher, who has named her business MAYcreations, admits her artistic career is not for everyone. The entire process is time-consuming and labor intensive.

In addition to the "graveyard of pasta machines" that Tagher has exhausted to help roll the clay, the entire process is completed by hand.

Patience is a requirement.

The process, known as Millefiori, an ancient technique used by glass makers for centuries, takes place in the basement of the Tagher's home on the family farm.

With the help of husband Paul, who also handles the business side of MAYcreations, Tagher creates or re-creates artwork on a computer.

The design is then built like a puzzle -- each puzzle piece a color -- onto a large slab of polymer clay, which Tagher slaps and pounds into small workable squares. She can then slice those square and roll them onto beads.

"I really have found something I love," says the artist, who often takes the stringing process on the road, creating bracelets and necklaces at soccer games and while waiting for her two children to be dismissed from school.

For Amy Quinn, the jewelry that sports the tiny drawings of orphans is a simple, but big, marketing tool.

"May's beads have certainly been a good fund-raiser for the children's home, but more than that her pieces raise awareness," said Quinn, past president of the Diocesan Catholic Children's Home.

"People ask me all the time about my bracelet and that leads into them asking me questions about the children's home. The children really tell the story of the children's home through May's beads."

In the past three years, MAYcreations has given up to 40 percent of sales to local organizations and schools.

In the first year creating pieces for Malia's Cord Foundation, MAYcreations raised $1,200 for the organization dedicated to finding a cure for pediatric spinal cord gliomas.

Tagher creates jewelry for nearly all of Northern Kentucky's private and public schools and some Cincinnati schools. They include Holy Cross, Highlands, Beechwood, Ryle, Newport Catholic and Covington Catholic.

Tagher's work is sold at the gift shops of Cincinnati Children's Hospital, the Women's Well Gift Boutique at St. Elizabeth Medical Center and many school spirit shops.

* For more information, call Tagher at (859) 485-6763 or visit the Web site at: www.maycreations.com