Nadja Aller

General Manager

Nadja keeps the staff on target to meet daily, weekly and monthly goals. She has spent a good chunk of time inputting data and tweaking our database so that our systems will be fully integrated. Her efficiency & down-to-earth brain is a good counterbalance to Rebeca's flurry of artsy ideas.

Nadja joined B3 with a long history in retail but as a novice in chainmaille so she jumped in and started learning weaves right away. She spends her spare time being a terrible cat lady, dealing in vintage home goods, posing 1:6 scale figures, constant reading, watching cartoons and martial arts films and being very domestically inclined. Nadja enjoys nothing more than Hank Sr. and achieving perfect Paulette Goddard hair. That's the stuff. She is also fully dedicated to keeping Blue Buddha the best place to work in the known Universe.

Matt Coppola

Inventory Knight & Ring Sorting Specialist

Matt joined our team in August 2012 and is currently learning the ins and outs of all things "jump rings". He works hard to quality control our rings and has begun assisting our inventory coordinators with measuring rings to keep up with our precision-sizing demands.

Matt hails from the plains of Nebraska and traveled to the shore of Lake Michigan, staying put after experiencing all the magic that Chicago holds. His studies and experiences contain a healthy mix of political science, database management, and logistical circumstances. In his free time, Matt enjoys traveling, cooking (and eating), brewing beer, reading, and baseball. He sees beauty in the details and when sorting through our rings, he imagines all of the wonderful products created by our customers. He is excited to be a part of the Blue Buddha team!

Jenna Deidel

Marketing Maven

Jenna maintains our social networking profiles, helps maintain our blog, and works hard to make sure the Blue Buddha brand shines through all our marketing materials. She also takes some of our Blue Buddha photographs, including the step-by-step photos for Rebeca's book CHAINED.

Jenna moved to Chicago from Boulder, CO in 2003 and attended Columbia College Chicago where she attained a BA in Photography and a minor in dance. While her day to day dealings at B3 rarely exercise the latter (although they have on occasion!) she is proud to have put her BA to good use as the step-by-step project photographer for Rebeca's book, CHAINED. In addition to her work as B3's Marketing Maven, Jenna is an independent professional tap dance artist and the Director of Audience Development for Audible Odyssey, a on-profit organization that focuses on the development of fellow tap dance artists and changing the culture of tap dance in Chicago.

Emily Fiks

Product Manager

Emily is in charge of coordinating new product introductions for sale and she also manages our product database. In between these lofty tasks, Emily still finds time to help fill orders and get them to you quickly!

Emily came to Blue Buddha as an inventory assistant in the summer of 2008. Originally arriving here nearly oblivious to chainmaille jewelry, Emily started to feel addicted after one class at Lillstreet. Chainmaille products take up a lot of her time now that she has graduated from Northeastern Illinois University. She received a BA in English and a minor in Art History. When not at B3, Emily loves vintage clothes—buying, wearing, and altering. She also loves animals, cooking, and 70s/80s punk, and power pop.

David Heinrich

Customer Experience Manager

David is our smile maker! He is in charge of making sure our customers are delighted to do business with Blue Buddha Boutique. He oversees daily operations of our Customer Care, Marketing, Classes and Retail departments.

David joined B3 with a long history in retail management, including overseeing the launching of three retail stores. His previous job introduced him to the world of crafts, and he is excited to help B3 grow to the next level with his experience and knowledge. In his free time, David likes to travel, fly, cook, and watch movies.

Jennifer Hohe

Purchasing Kingpin

Jen is responsible for purchasing and protecting our inventory—all 10 million or so rings that are in our studio at any given time! She works with our vendors and ringmakers to continually improve the quality of our jump rings and other supplies.

While pursuing her degree in Art at Northeastern Illinois University, Jen took a Metals class out of interest, immediately fell in love with the medium, and has since attained her BA in Small Metals/Jewelry. Jen is addicted to the painstaking, step-by-step processes involved in creating wearable pieces of art. In addition to making jewelry, Jen enjoys creating small-scale sculptures and two-dimensional framed metal "paintings". Her work is influenced by themes of nostalgia, emotion, and sentimentality. She hopes to one day have her own little space to sell her work.

Matt Hucke

Dark Master of Chaos

Matt keeps the web servers running, installs software on them, and does all the custom programming necessary to keep the orders flowing smoothly.

Originally from the St. Louis area, Matt has lived in Chicago since 1993. In 1996, he created the Graveyards of Illinois website. This led to a collaboration with author Ursula Bielski, resulting in their book, "Graveyards of Chicago", being published in 1999. He continues to explore graveyards at every opportunity.

Artie Keefe

Arthur, King of the Inventories

Artie was the first employee hired to help with orders back in 2007. As the inventory coordinator and quality control supervisor, he has the monumental task of controlling inventory stock levels and overseeing quality control.

Artie is a Chicagoland native, but a love of travel took him away from Blue Buddha Boutique for a few years. He managed to keep up with his sorting skills during his absence, most notably on an organic farm in Wisconsin. He originally came to Blue Buddha through a fluke search on Craigslist, but loved it so much that he could never really leave. Artie is an intermittent crafter, and still a beginner at chainmaille weaving. His other interests include gardening, philosophy, biking, primitive living, and quickly sorting thousands of tiny shiny things into baggies.

Maximillian Otto Lapine

Forward Quality Strategist

Max sifts through our non-colored base metals, quality controlling them and weighing out pack quantities, so they are pre-bagged and ready to go for our Internet orders. He also lends a hand as our office assistant and fills orders when we get swamped.

Conceived because his parents “had a deal”, Max was born in Rochester, NY and moved to Chicago to go to Columbia College to study acting in 2004. Quite a change from his beginnings as pre-law, but he wanted the big bucks. After graduating he moved to LA for a short time, found the dream wasn't there and then promptly returned to Chicago's loving arms. Max is an actor and a writer and has performed throughout the city. He is a proud member of the comedy troupe “The Sean Miller Explosion”, a perennial favorite at the Chicago Sketch Comedy festival. Max found B3 by way of Craigslist and had no idea of what he was about to be a part of. Max sifts through our base metals and make sure they're as good as they can be, and it never stops... He also bets that we are a collection of the best-looking people in this industry.

Aimee Leang

Customer Care Supervisor

The friendly voice who answers most of our calls and helps you complete your phone orders belongs to Aimee. She helps answer emails, supervises the customer care team, and ensures that customers are fully satisfied with their B3 experience.

Aimee Leang's jewelry making obsession began at her first summer job working for Gallery 37's jewelry making program. After that Aimee's Mom gave her a set of tools and her creativity took off. Aimee is well versed in the skills of wire-wrapping, metalsmithing and lapidary. She still continues to take lessons and looks forward to increasing her awareness in the chainmaille arts. Having an eye for detail, Aimee enjoys helping out at B3 and is proud to be part of such an incredible team.

April Llewellyn

Full-Spectrum Filler & Inspectionista

April joined our team in August 2012 and comes to us with a love of all things crafty. She helps to fill orders and quality control rings to make sure your rings arrive quickly and look perfect every time.

April Hannah Llewellyn (aprilhl for short) is originally from the geek haven of Huntsville, AL. She moved to Chicago in 2009 to gain an MFA in Book and Paper Arts and is quite enthusiastic about all forms of making and creating. Jill-of-all-trades, Mistress-of-some, her favorite mediums include papermaking, illustration, book arts, web design, jewelry making, and painting. She's delighted to now help others along their crafty artisan journeys by filling orders at Blue Buddha. You can catch more of her at www.aprilhl.net.

Omni Mee

Knowledge Navigator

Visitors to our booth at the Bead&Button show will probably recognize Omni as one of our chainmaille experts and B3 Ambassadors. We're thrilled that he has joined our customer care team permanently and look forward to continuing to work with him as a B3 Designer.

Summoned from Saturn’s moon Titan, Omni came to assist Aimee in Customer Care and to spread the word of chainmaille across the galaxy. He heads Entropyware jewelry and you may know him from the Scale Barrette pattern and the Bead and Button show. In his former life, Omni worked as an Audiovisual tech before he became a jewelry designer. He is mostly a self-taught designer, focusing on chainmaille and other metalsmithing techniques. In his free time Omni is an avid fan of cyberpunk sci-fi, punk and industrial music, and Japanese history and culture.

Darlene Ostrowski

Order Filler

Darlene took a Blue Buddha chainmaille class three years ago at Lillstreet and was instantly hooked! She's excited to join the staff officially after working the B3 booth at Bead & Button show for the past two years.

A born-and-raised Chicagoan, she enjoys making jewelry with skulls, bats, spiders, sinister sea creatures, and other creepy things, and owns a goth chainmaille company, Do Bats Eat Cats?. When she's not weaving maille or working a show, she devours postapocalyptic YA fiction (her English lit professors would be so proud!), and is an enthusiastic, if somewhat incompetent, organic vegetable gardener.

Lisa Rosenberg

Expositions Innovation Facilitator, Marquise d'Findings and Picker Extraordinaire

Lisa joined the Blue Buddha Boutique team in September 2010. She originally started off as a seasonal worker, but we loved her so much we decided to hire her permanently. Lisa picks every order that comes in through our website, helps manage inventory stock and coordinates our trade and bead shows.

An avid crafter and certified graphic artist, Lisa Rosenberg comes to B3 with a love of all things jewelry. From her Metal Smith class to her various beading projects, Lisa is most at home being creative. She also enjoys collecting "Hello Kitty" and other toys from her youth, caring for orchids and other plants, reading mostly from the SF section, watching cartoons, and playing with her dog, Jasper.

Daniel Rychtarik

Journeyman Weaver and Patron Emissary

Due to his extensive chainmaille knowledge and overall friendly attitude, Dan recently joined forces with Aimee to help with our customer care. He also helps quality control our colored rings and is a weaving assistant that we often call on for help with samples and more!

Dan is a Chicagoland native. Being relatively new to the world of chainmaille, Dan has taken the metaphoric bull by the horns. In the beginning it was good. He was given the chance of an apprenticeship under a better mailler than himself. From then on, little did he know, his life was going to take a turn for the best. Now Dan and his tutor share the same chainmaille shop at the Bristol Renaissance Fair. Dan would say his best chainmaille work is done with anodized aluminum and rubber rings, which can be seen in all their glory on his website When Rings Dream. Some of Dan's other hobbies and passions are fire spinning for the Chicago Fire Tribe, Tae Kwon Do, Welding, Paintball, Spray Paint Art and The Rubik's Cube. And he couldn't be more excited to become a member of the Blue Buddha team.

Jason Scerena

Electric Wizard

Jason joined our team in October 2009 and is responsible for anodizing niobium. Attendees of the Bead&Button Show probably recognize Jason as one of our booth helpers. He also helps train new show staff as we grow each year.

Born not so long ago, in a land not too far away, Jason was drawn to the city of Chicago for it's rich culture and proximity to home. He attended the Illinois Institute of Art where her obtained a Bachelors of Fine Arts in digital media and animation. You will soon be able to see his work at JasonScerena.com. He has a variety of hobbies and interests which include shiny objects, painting miniatures, pretending, growing plants, comics, learning, yard sales, art, geology, mythology, funology. Being an avid game player and a fantasy aficionado, he was no stranger to chainmaille's protective capabilities, but was surprised that it had applications outside armour. He's proud to be a part of our growing team.

Erik Watson

Shipping Specialist

Erik is our shipping machine! He does a triple-check on orders as he packs them to make sure customers receive exactly what they ordered. He also creates all the shipping labels and sends shipping confirmations to our customers.

Erik traveled to Columbus, Ohio to study illustration, then bounded off to San Francisco to study film. After four years of filmmaking in Los Angeles, Erik has returned to his hometown of Chicago as a freelance illustrator, keeping himself busy with screenwriting and post film production. His interests include reading books, making short films with friends and watching cartoons with his niece and three nephews. As a wearer and lover of handmade jewelry, Erik is very excited to be a part of the Blue Buddha team and is more than ready to process your orders!

Samm Watson

Mixx-Meister and dispenser of questionable legal advice

Samm is Blue Buddha's "Mix Man," which means he creates our anodized aluminum and enameled copper mixes and keeps them well-stocked. In addition, he quality-controls tens of thousands of anodized aluminum rings each day.

Hailing from the land of citrus, sunshine, and violent lightning storms, Samm received a degree in history from the University of Florida before traveling the world as a teacher, archaeologist, and amateur documentarian. His interests include reading, 80's hardcore punk and dance music, and repetitive tasks that would melt the brains of most people. Samm has seen Back to the Future more times than most people have watched the news, and is currently examining the best way to incorporate chainmaille onto his leather jacket.

Malic White

Order Filler

Malic is one of the first people to join our team in our big new space! We're thrilled to have him on board to help us meticulously quality control rings and help fill orders to quickly get them out our door and into your mailbox.

Since his days as a child actor in musical theater, Malic has written angry editorials, sung love ballads at weddings and show tunes at funerals, led a support group, blogged about fashion trends, written for Bitch Magazine and performed at the Moth StorySLAM in Chicago and San Francisco. Malic is a current member of the Neo-Futurist Theater Ensemble, where he writes, directs and performs 2-minute plays about his Really Embarrassing Habits and other more important things, like politics. He likes ghost stories and The Muppets. And he likes you.

Kathy (Kat) Wisniewski

Curriculum Director, Product Developer & Instructor

Kat has developed some of the best-selling kits and instructions we carry, including the Glass Caterpillar. She comes into the studio twice a week to help put together customer orders.

Kat Wisniewski of Elemental Art Jewelry is an innovative jewelry artist and attire designer specializing in glass chainmaille designs. Kat also enjoys teaching chainmaille & wirework, as she has done professionally since 2005 throughout the Chicagoland area, and also at the internationally recognized Bead&Button Show. Having invented about 11 weaves and chainmaille patterns featuring stylish glass and rubber rings, Kat has rapidly become a well-respected and nationally known expert in the field of modern chainmaille fashion.

Zeddicus Zul Zorander

Company Mascot

Zed's antics never fail to make us laugh when things get hectic and stressful. As of spring 2010, you can find Zed hiding in all of our print advertisements.