I am a jewellery "assembler"

People often ask how I come up with designs for my jewellery and quite often people are surprised to find out I actually don't drawn any of my pieces. If I think of something, I'll lay out my beads and my charms and try put something together. But I have a scrapbook of pretty things that I can draw inspiration from.

However, when I lived in China and before I found my amazing Lao Shi, I didn't make any jewellery but I'd see people wearing pretty pieces I just had to jot down so remind myself when I get back to my tools and materials. Then I travelled to Italy to do a jewellery design course for a month. My Dad had always told me to go into designing pieces with diamonds and other precious stones if I was really into it because that's where the money is (typical business man way of thought), but I know it isn't for me because I love costume jewellery - you can read about it here - and also because I love touching my stones and my beads and it's all me from start to finish...it gives me a sense of satisfaction.

So when I got to IED (Instituto Europeo di Design), the teachers who had worked for some of the top brands like Rolex and Bulgari they told me to develop a collection from a chosen theme. I was lost. I don't have "collections" per se. More like this and that. But that's because every piece is unique. So to derive an ideas from one theme was painful. And I really had only ever been inspired by jewellery itself. My classmates were inspired by Spanish balconies, architecture, fruits and plants. So I thought I'd better pick something - I chose the rainforest having grown up in Brunei. My collection ended up being something like this...

~ On another note, I wrote about The Prince's Rainforest Project recently...and it's something close to my heart given where I'm from but it doesn't seem that there has been much publicity about it (or maybe that's just me)...so if you haven't heard / read about it, check it out here and follow the link to the official website :) ~

One component of a class was to use a computer program to draw jewellery (which honestly was not for me), so I spoke to the teacher and she said, "So you're not a designer, you're an assembler". But design I did that Summer and I was delighted to see over a year later one of my ideas realised by Dior!

No, I don't think they stole my design, by the concept was the same and it makes me feel that I should have developed the idea more *oh, the potential* But that's ok, it still makes me happy. I can dream to one day be working for Christian Dior (just like how they do in the CA ads except I won't be doing the mathy stuff :))