When I started making jewelry, I made what I loved. Blue. Natural stone. Meaningful symbols. Pieces that felt like something, that had weight and intention and a reason to exist beyond being pretty.
That's still true. But something shifted when I started making jewelry for a shop instead of just for myself. And it took me a while to understand what that shift actually required.
The Problem with Making What You Love
Making what you love is the right place to start. It's where authenticity comes from, where the work gets its voice. If I don't believe in a piece, it shows. The design feels tentative. The choices feel arbitrary. The bracelet ends up on the mat looking like it's not sure why it's there.
But a shop isn't a personal collection. A shop is a conversation with people whose wrists are not mine, whose color instincts are not mine, whose lives and meanings and reasons for wanting a bracelet are entirely their own. If I only make what I would wear, I'm making a very small shop for a very specific customer — me — and hoping everyone else happens to agree.
They don't always agree. And that's not a problem. That's the whole point.
What I Had to Learn to Let Go Of
Blue is my color. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. But not everyone's color is blue, and a shop full of blue bracelets — however beautiful — is a shop that's talking to itself.
So I buy reds I wouldn't reach for first. Warm neutrals that feel too quiet for my own taste but land perfectly on someone who wants jewelry that doesn't announce itself. Pinks that took me a while to understand and that I now genuinely love, partly because I made myself work with them long enough to see what they could do.
I try not to let my color biases rule my wire. That's a discipline, not a natural state. Left entirely to my own instincts, I would make a very blue shop. The work of designing for other people is the work of staying curious about colors and combinations that aren't your first choice — and finding out what they're capable of.
What Doesn't Change
The focal bead still leads. That's non-negotiable, regardless of who the piece is for. The bead that has something to say gets to say it, and everything else on the wire listens. That's not my preference — that's just how good design works.
The materials still matter. I'm not going to use something I don't believe in because I think it might sell. The sourcing philosophy, the recycled materials, the natural stone, the small vendors — those stay, because they're not just about my taste. They're about what the work is.
And the intention stays. Every piece I make is made for someone, even when I don't know who yet. I'm designing for the person who will pick it up at the market and feel something — recognition, or comfort, or the particular pleasure of a color that is exactly right for reasons they can't fully explain.
I don't know who that person is until they show up. But I'm making the bracelet for them anyway.
The Thing I Didn't Expect
Designing beyond my own preferences has made me a better designer. Not because my preferences were wrong, but because constraints teach you things that freedom doesn't. Working with a color I wouldn't choose first forces me to understand it — what it needs, what it does, what it's capable of when it's treated with the same attention I give to blue.
The bead leads. I follow. And sometimes where it leads is somewhere I wouldn't have gone on my own, and the bracelet is better for it.
That's the whole job, really. Staying open enough to be surprised by what you make.