Carley Tillinghast

Portfolio Categories: Decorative.

Orange Hornet and Web Spider, beads and wire

Carley’s art began when she was a child, where she would spend hours in hopes of becoming a cartoonist. She grew up in a creative household, with a mother whom created hand-braided rugs. As she grew up, she moved from the world of traditional medium, and began to explore the world of Fiber arts, when she took up crocheting around the age of 10 years old.

As she became more involved in crocheting, she eventually moved onto the art of tatting in the early 90’s. Tatting is also known in many circles as poor man’s lace or a hand-created lace, and is a rare and dying art form. She began to sell her pieces at craft shows, much like her mother had, but did not find as much success as she had hoped.

One day, while looking at her inventory, she realized she had extra supplies of beads and networking cable from the IT work that she does in her M-F 9-5 job, and stripping wire. By chance, Carley had come across a folktale about Christmas spiders, and while experimenting with her wires and beads had created her very own Christmas spiders. These became quickly popular, and eventually Carley began to make other creations with her wires, including other bugs, trees and LED-lit trees.

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