Fabulous Friday Features: Meet Sharla of BeadedTail

Here is the next installment of the Fabulous Friday Features, where I feature a wonderful Etsy artist each week. Have an idea who the next featured artist should be? Leave a comment below and I'll do my best :)
Without further ado, I will hand this over to Sharla of Beaded Tail, a wonderful artist dedicated to helping animals:

~Isabella~

I’m Sharla and along with my mom, Sheri, we started BeadedTail in 2007. I’m a CPA living in Oregon and beading is a way for me to relax and enjoy finding my creative side. My mom is a retired Realtor living in Sun City in Las Vegas, NV. Mom began taking beading classes and kept telling me how much she enjoyed it. After a visit to my house, she taught me how to make bracelets and I was hooked. Eventually I made enough bracelets to go from wrist to elbow on both arms so I knew something needed to change. One day as I was searching for cat beads, I came across Etsy and the idea for BeadedTail was born!

~Angel~

We’ve always been animal lovers so we knew we wanted to sell our jewelry and donate the proceeds to animal charities. We chose the name BeadedTail since it combines what we make, beaded jewelry, with the reason we are making it, critters with tails! It didn’t limit us to just cats and dogs but includes horses and even dolphins so the name was perfect for us. To date we’ve donated $631.50 which includes $527 to animal charites and an additional $104.50 to “human” charities through my involvement with the EtsyAngels team.

~Sadie~

The animal charities we support are ones that of course help homeless pets, especially senior pets, and also organizations that fight puppy mills. They have to be stopped!

I also really want to support organizations that do TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) of feral cats such as Alley Cat Allies. When feral cats are taken to a traditional shelter, they are euthanized because they are seen as unadoptable due to their fear of people. By practing TNR, the feral cats continue living and thriving in their own outdoor world, however, it stops the cycle of more and more cats being born. It is possible for feral cats to become wonderful, caring pets but shelters just do not have the time, patience or revenue to help them in that transition. So, as Bob Barker used to say, “help control the pet population, have your pet spayed or neutered!” Also, remember the motto “Don’t shop, adopt” when considering adding a pet to your family!

My husband and I have two cats, Angel and Isabella, who were adopted from a local shelter and we also have a husky named Sadie who came from a puppy mill type operation in Nebraska. Here’s a link to her story on my blog as well as the story of how we came to adopt Isabella and Angel.

Sadie http://beadedtail.blogspot.com/2008/05/youre-come-long-way-baby.html

Isabella http://beadedtail.blogspot.com/2008/11/were-celebrating-and-you-get-25-off-all.html

Angel http://beadedtail.blogspot.com/2008/11/celebrating-gotcha-day-continued.html

As a thank you to Meghann for offering us this feature, we’re going to offer 25% off to any of your blog readers who mention “Meghann sent me” in the notes to seller.

Wow, what a great deal, and what a great effort you are putting forth to help animals and people everywhere Sharla! You are a great inspiration to everyone :)

Remember to enter my monthly contest by adding your name and email to my monthly newsletter (You have to sign up for the newsletter first to be eligible to win!!), see the full contest details here.