Rachel Goetz is an interior designer, glass bead artist, and jewelry designer who loves the world of texture and color, and is inspired by nature, other artists, and family. The first word ever spoken by Rachel as a baby was "pretty" after being shown a necklace of beads by her mother. As the years passed, she dabbled in the artistic worlds of crossstitch, crewel embroidery, trapunto, pottery, watercolor, colored pencil, charcoal, pastel, acrylic and oil. Her father passed away while she was in college, inspiring her to focus on making interiors comfortable for families in crisis. She received her BA in Interior Design from Iowa State University and practiced Healthcare Design for 18 years. In 2000, her daughter was born, inspiring her to continue her creative journey, leading her to explore metalsmithing and jewelrymaking. Rachel discovered the world of molten glass in 2002 through the process of glass beadmaking (also known as flameworking or lampworking). She had come full circle. Glass beads, "pretty" as they were, was exactly where she wanted to be.

Glass beadmaking is accomplished by melting glass in the flame of a torch and winding it around a metal rod. While the glass is in a molten state, it is pushed, poked, cut, and formed into the desired shape. While the shaped bead is still hot, it can be decorated with glass, enamels and metals. The bead is then placed in a pre-heated kiln and annealed, which is a process that slowly brings the hot glass to ambient temperature, making the resulting bead more durable and less likely to crack or break. Rachel loves to watch glass melt and metal melt on glass. Because glass color mixing doesn't follow the rules of paint color mixing, she is continually intrigued and surprised by the colors produced in mixing, blending and layering glass, enamels, and metal.