A master at handcrafting dreamcatchers, she doesn’t make the traditional threaded ones. Hers are made entirely of beads, each individually tied together by hand.
Santhia, a full-time engineer at a biopharma firm, started SanthiArt in 2021. But her passion for working with beads and string began when she was around 12 years old.
She gushed about her hobby with FMT Lifestyle recently. “My mom was a school teacher, and I noticed that she wore lots of accessories to work.
“So, when she wasn’t looking, I’d steal beads from her chains and bracelets, and make a new design myself.”
She soon started designing earrings and chains, gifting these to her mother to add to her collection.
Her crafty nature didn’t fade with time. After her SPM examinations, she experimented with making dreamcatchers for the first time – a traditional Native American craft using string or yarn that was becoming a trendy ornament worldwide.
But years later, as an adult, she returned to her beads. “One day I just realised that, ‘Yes, I’m working as an engineer. But what am I doing for myself?’
“Initially I made the ordinary dreamcatcher with thread, but later on I thought, ‘How do I make it different? How do I make it uniquely mine?’”
That’s when she came up with the idea of swapping thread for beads. “This is actually harder to create compared with the traditional thread version,” she admitted.
She said it took about six months to go from idea to final product, experimenting with different beads, strings, and techniques.
“I started with one layer of beads attached around a hoop, and gifted it to my family members.”
Her childhood fascination with beads soon became a small business, and she now makes around seven to eight dreamcatchers a week to fulfil customer orders.
“During my seven years of working, I was always on site, and it was quite stressful running here and there. Every day after work, I’d come back to do this because it made me calm,” Santhia said.
FMT Lifestyle watched her make one dreamcatcher in under 45 minutes. Using stainless steel wire, which can withstand up to one kilogramme in weight, she attaches either crystal beads or cats-eye beads to the metal hoop.
Her standard 7cm and 9cm dreamcatchers include three rounds of beads, often in contrasting colours.
In the middle, she attaches a charm that dangles – maybe a lotus flower or a religious symbol. To incorporate elements of traditional dreamcatchers, she adds feather charms made of metal at the bottom.
Her dreamcatchers come in many designs, colours, sizes, and charms, all of which can be customised. Her largest, at 13cm, can sometimes take a couple of hours to complete.
Today, creations like the evil-eye dreamcatcher are customer favourites, with around 500 sold to date.
“A lot of people like to hang these in their car, and because it’s not plastic it won’t get damaged under the sun.”
While some believe that hanging a dreamcatcher near your bedside can protect you from nightmares (catching the bad dreams in the net while letting the good ones pass through), for Santhia, it’s about the aesthetics.
“I don’t promise that it will bring good energy. I just focus on making it pretty,” she shared. “Even till today I don’t think of it as a business, that’s not my main agenda. This is just a hobby I love to do.”
Follow SanthiaArt on Instagram.