there was a lot of fun, the innocence of childhood playtime, and a natural eye.

I’ve been playing with, and designing jewellery since I was a child. The first thing I ever played with to make ‘adorning’ jewellery was seed bead safety pins that clipped onto anything. Shoes, shirts, purses, it wasn’t hard to see that I loved making these youthful pieces.

After the safety pins, I moved onto gimp, everyone in my generation made gimp necklaces, bracelets, key-chains and hairpieces.

Next came modeling beads out of Femo (a love I still have). I would for hours make animals, flowers, anything I could think of and bake them to use in my jewellery.

I gave my creations away as gifts and later sold ‘hemp’ necklaces at the ‘Color your World’ store in Owen Sound. My grandmother owned ‘Gwen’s Handicraft’ and had flower arrangements on display with permissions from the then owners and family friends “the Bittens”. So, she asked for me to display some of my hemp necklaces, to which Mr. and Mrs. Bitten agreed, it was my very first store selling my designs, it was exciting.

Then came high school, and I still ventured into finding new materials to create my designs. I discovered copper wire. I loved it! Hooked on the flexibility of the copper, I spent hours creating necklaces, rings, earrings, hairpins, etc. Using fire polished glass beads, semi-precious stones and beads, my jewellery started to pick up its own style.

Moving on into Fine Arts at Fanshawe College and then onto N.S.C.A.D University, I found other metals and my very favourite to this day, sterling silver and swarovski crystal beads.

You can find me salivating in the craft sections of department stores, exploring the warehouse stores in Toronto, and pining over the lovely colored beads, stones and crystals, please lord give me more!!!

The answer to my beginning is that I don’t really have one, I’ve always had something in my hands, and I’ve always played with jewellery. Its about time I started a business doing one of the things I love to do with my time, creating sparkly things that you can see.