Meet the Maker
Meet Annie, owner of AnniesMix’dMetllez. Fun fact, she came up the name while sitting at the Lucky Shag!
Her first piece ever sold was a commission for the mum of a lady at Annie’s work. After this she had a jewellery party at her house with friends and colleagues and it was a great success. Annie started selling her beautiful items on Etsy in August 2020. Her first ever market was the Applecross Rotary Jacaranda Festival in November 2020. She did well although I didn’t realise it until after the day had finished. After a period of growth, Annie now does a few different markets regularly and she loves every minute. Annie’s main goal is to promote her beautiful products on social media, and to garner an online following.
When she is not designing jewellery, Annie works as a full time Nurse Manager at Fremantle Hospital. Making jewellery started out as a hobby, and when Annie realised how much she loved it, and how expensive this hobby is, she decided to start selling her pieces.
Annie wanted to sell enough so that she didn’t need to use her income to support her hobby. She achieved this goal after just a few markets. She loves the market life and really loves making jewellery. Her hope is to transition into part time work as her jewellery business grows.
When Inspiration Hits
Annie has a studio set up in her garage. Originally, her studio was under the back patio, but she found it too hot in the summer heat. She moved into the garage, and it’s perfect. She finds inspiration for her designs all around her. She closely observes the type of jewellery that people are wearing, she scrolls through Pinterest and even watches TV to pick up on what is popular. She combines all her ideas and observations together to come up with a concept for a piece.
Often, inspiration hits at the most inconvenient time. Annie knows that her strength lies in her ideas and not in her artistic skills, so she prefers to use words to describe her designs in a “visual” diary alongside a very basic sketch.
Her design process is also very organic. She sits down in her studio, and she start playing with the metal and shapes and stones. She adds a bit and takes a bit away, and slowly a piece emerges. These are often her favourite pieces. She likes to make unique pieces that are chunky and bold. She makes jewellery to last a lifetime, making sure each piece is affordable without being undervalued. There is very little waste in Annie’s studio. Any silver off-cuts are melted down later to make other pieces.
Annie recently started working with pearls and this has been a steep learning curve. But she enjoyed the challenge of learning how to make a cage to set the pearls in.
