"You have to always be turning it," Andrea Guarino-Slemmons said, twisting the stainless steel mandrel holding a glowing, molten bead. "Otherwise ... " She made a dripping gesture with her free hand.

It takes 25 years and 20 minutes to make a glass bead, according to Guarino-Slemmons. She should know; she took the 2015 Excellence in Jewelry Artistry Award at the Bead&Button Show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a 13-day celebration that included exhibits, demonstrations and more than 700 classes.

"It’s the highest honor in what I do,” Guarino-Slemmons said.

She does lampworking, the traditional name for a type of glasswork that uses a torch to melt glass. The name harks back to when artists used the flame of an oil lamp.

“Lampworking is an old art,” Guarino-Slemmons said.

While Guarino-Slemmons has established herself as a bead artist, her career has been characterized by change.

One of her first jobs was painting billboards as a 19-year-old, she said. Her mother worked with stained glass and, when she became ill, left the equipment with no one to use it. Guarino-Slemmons picked up the craft and did that successfully for a number of years.

A career as an artist isn't always the most financially stable, but Guarino-Slemmons held firm in her pursuit of a creative and joyful life.

“I always wanted to do art,” she said. “There were lots of years where I ate Top Ramen every day. Lots of artists give up.”

She didn't give up, and her persistence started to pay off when she saw a demonstration by a Seattle glass artist in 1990 and, with him as a mentor, learned to make glass beads.

At the time, Guarino-Slemmons was focused on making fused-glass bowls, but she started wearing the beads she made.

“People were like, ‘Where’d you buy that?’” Guarino-Slemmons said.

Then they asked if she wanted to sell them.

When the promoter of a bead show in Tucson, Arizona, saw Guarino-Slemmons’ work, she talked her into participating in the show. New to the bead-making scene, Guarino-Slemmons was reluctant, especially given the high price of table space at the four-day show.

“I made a whole bunch of beads and sold out by the second day,” she said.

From there, her prominence grew.

She and four other artists formed Artisans on Taylor, a cooperative gallery in Port Townsend that closed in 2013. She sells many of her beads through her Facebook group; whoever comments first gets to buy the bead. Her work also appears at Port Townsend Gallery on Water Street.

One of the most illustrious opportunities her success has afforded her is the chance to travel the world and teach.

"I get contacted all the time by people who own glass shops and want me to come teach a workshop,” Guarino-Slemmons said. As a result, she has taught all over the world, in Australia, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Denmark and Italy.

“Now, I’m at the point where I like teaching at home," she said. "People come to Port Townsend from all over the world to learn.”

Guarino-Slemmons estimates that 85 percent of her students reside outside of Port Townsend.

While Guarino-Slemmons is the genius behind the designs, she's the first to point out the help she gets.

Her husband, Whit Slemmons, who started out as a customer and even took her class, installed a ventilation system in her studio.

"Working with this type of glass and the metals can be really bad to be breathing, because it's always vaporizing the silver," Guarino-Slemmons said. "And before I met Whit, I wasn't using good ventilation. I used to get really sick. And so he's designed these ventilation systems now and he's made the instructions available for people to get for free [on her website], because we want people to be safe."

Whit and Jim Moore, a friend, make different tools for shaping the beads.

“Anytime I have an idea of a new shape I want to do, he and Whit make me a tool,” she said.

They've also made tools to ease some of the strain on Guarino-Slemmons' hands. She's had carpal tunnel surgery on both hands as well as a joint removed from her thumbs.

“I worry about my hands all the time,” she said.

So Whit and Moore created an instrument that alleviates some of the strain that comes from removing the bead from its holder.

And don't discount Towanda, her cat and “little helper,” who can often be found hanging out in the studio.

When Guarino-Slemmons opened her email last fall and read that she had been selected for the Excellence in Jewelry Artistry Award, she said she screamed.

It wasn't the first honor she'd received; she's taught four master classes at the Bead&Button Show and was selected to make 270 commemorative beads for the 15th anniversary of the show. Those beads sold out, so now she's in the process of making at least 50 more.

Finding out about the Excellence in Jewelry Artistry Award was particularly exciting, though.

"I started screaming, 'Whit! Whit! Come in here and look at this,'" she said.

Since she was teaching her fourth master class, Guarino-Slemmons attended the show from May 27 to June 8. She received her award, a fused-glass bowl, at the June 6 Bead Social.

Now home once more, she's back at work and looking for the next evolution in her art.

She said she likes to mix science with art, as demonstrated by the color-changing reactions she achieves by applying silver leaf to glass.

“I don’t know why it happens, but I like what it did,” she said.

She added that she's "definitely headed more into metal" with her art.

"I want to do more silversmithing and goldsmithing,” she said. That doesn't mean it's the end of the road for her famous beads, though.

“Glass will always be part of my work."