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About Maya Dillon

Maya Dillon, founder of Beadlo

Maya Dillon

Founder & Art Teacher

Austin, TX

About the Author

Maya Dillon spent seven years teaching K-5 art in Austin public schools During a spring semester craft project, she watched a six-year-old girl quietly cry because a generic bracelet kit didn't have enough letter E's to spell her name. In that same class, three other kids snapped their flimsy 0.4mm elastic cords within five minutes.

Instead of buying more frustrating materials, Maya spent the next eight months testing components herself. She hand-stretched 0.8mm elastic cords thousands of times to ensure they wouldn't snap, and manually calculated the exact vowel ratios needed to spell real names without running out of A's or E's. That anger over bad materials turned into the standard for Beadlo.

Today, Maya designs kits and writes practical, step-by-step guides to help families turn screen time into made-by-hand time. When she isn't testing new bead palettes, she's usually trying to convince her orange tabby cat, Mochi, to stop sitting on her keyboard.