Since closing their store on Murphy Street, Terry and daughter Gina Senzatimore have operated their jewelry-design business, Bead Ranch, out of their homes on the north side of Sunnyvale. The two sell their wares at craft shows around the area, such as the upcoming Christmas in the Studio in Los Gatos, but generally like to stay close to home, where kids and cats make for a casual work environment.

"There were so many people who were brokenhearted when we closed," Terry says, "but we don't want to get burned out. We like having January and February off to relax."

The artistry, not the stress, is what turned Terry on to bead-making in the first place. The holder of a master's in fine arts degree from San José State University, Terry studied mostly painting and drawing, and her walls are filled with works of her own. While attending a show at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, she saw beads made in the Italian millefiori tradition and was immediately hooked.

To create a millefiori bead, Terry takes polymer clay and slices different colors together to create a design, often flowers or cats. "Our bestsellers are flowers, but we really just like the important things in life," Terry says. After compiling a hunk of clay, Terry squeezes the malleable material down into a long cylinder called a cane. Terry then chops off thin layers of the clay, which are then fired at a low temperature to solidify them into beads.

"It's kind of like playing. I can almost do it with my eyes closed," Terry says.

But when Terry first started, daughter Senzatimore was skeptical. There are many artists in Terry's family--her partner, Dave, designs and builds furniture, and Senzatimore met her husband in an art class--but millefiori was a foreign concept. Senzatimore taught herself how to work with the beads and now serves as her mother's business partner--she designs the jewelry pieces and handles the finances and filling orders.

"Taking you to the Lawrence Hall of Science when you were little paid off," Terry says to her daughter. The Bead Ranch was established in 1993.

Senzatimore--now married with three young daughters--lives nearby. Her two oldest children attend Lakewood Elementary School like she did, so it's easy for her to drop by her mother's house and pick up finished beads to incorporate into necklaces, bracelets and charms. "I do a lot of my work at midnight," she says with a grin as she juggles a squirmy Ines.

Initially, beads were available at their store in downtown Sunnyvale, and the Bead Ranch made appearances at craft shows all over the country. Terry also used to teach with the city of Sunnyvale Parks and Recreation Department.

But with Senzatimore's growing family and the threat of fatigue, working from home is now a good arrangement. Terry creates her beads at her dining-room table, just steps from where her granddaughters can do their homework and the door her cats scratch when they want to come in from the backyard.

Terry and Senzatimore do make exceptions for a few local fairs such as the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival, attending about 12 from May through December. "Fairs are exhausting, but they're nice because you get more of an idea of what people want," Senzatimore says. In the past, however, customers have wanted to buy their entire stock of one kind of bead, assuming that they're mass-produced.

"We just can't sell them all to one person," Terry says. Instead, Terry does what she likes, which ranges from creating beads in the images of her cats to putting beads on anything from traditional millefiori patterns to charms shaped like modern purses.

"Those are so cute," Senzatimore says. "I love putting those on the website because I can give them names."

Terry and Senzatimore have lived in Sunnyvale since 1972, and moved into Lakewood after finding a right house with both a big backyard and a tree. But there was still something missing, which Terry discovered when she changed the name of her bead business from Sam & Dave to Bead Ranch. "I'd always wanted to have a ranch," she says with a grin.

Christmas in the Studio lasts from Nov. 11 to 13 at the Los Gatos History Club, located at 123 Los Gatos Blvd. Admission is free, and the show will benefit the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. For more information on the Bead Ranch, call 408.734.3163 or visit www.beadranch.com.