I was traveling 70-80% of the time and any time spent at home was recovering from the travel and workload. Then, at a family reunion while relatives showed photos of their families, I brought photos of my office decor. Rainier and my rural youth to jewel form. I began to commemorate my adventures in the jewelry I created, translating time with my brother, on Mt. I had plenty of adventure – I created the life I dreamed of….receiving marriage proposals after my stint as Chief Guest in Sri Lanka and eating piranha soup at an Ametrine mine in Bolivia. They then began entrusting me to make decisions for them in building their world-class collections. One client I met there was a member of a prominent engineering family (think Hoover Dam) who pushed me to engineer jewelry that could be multi-purpose and interchangeable which led to what I now do with my Progressive Pairs and custom designed multi-use jewelry.Īs I got more involved with fine gems and jewelry making, collectors began to find me and want me to teach them things a typical jewelry store could not. I designed artistic and informative speeches for their well-traveled clientele. The prestigious Golden Door Spa also began referring their clients to me for both gem procurement and jewelry design. I became a “go to” person in the trade for writers interviewing me for articles on developing collector culture, the female self-purchaser, jewelry styling, gemstones, sales training the luxury market. I was on Cloud 9 when the editor of “Professional Jeweler” magazine wrote an editorial on my fashion lecture declaring I, “manages to cull the 1% of usefulness out of the fashion world’s extravagance…” The American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) has featured 15 of my seminars at their annual Tucson Gem Faire since 1989. I enjoyed creating speeches for such diverse groups as: JCK’s Las Vegas trade shows, Neiman Marcus In-store meetings, American Gem Society’s annual conclaves, the Gemological Institute of America and numerous private jewelers. My dreams of writing came to be as I became a known author in the trade, writing over 50 articles of original content on gems, culture, marketing, and jewelry styling. That included sales training, thematic trunk shows, developing advertising, speeches to the consumer, even TV and radio interviews – including PBS’s award-winning series, “Newton’s Apple.” I created my trunk shows as adventure travel, opening others to the wonder of the world of colored gems and lands they come from. So, I did all I could to help the jewelers sell my gems. I couldn’t give away a peridot and the female self-purchaser was then an alien concept to most of the men I was dealing with. At that time, unset colored gems were very new to most jewelers and challenging to sell. in 1990 with the aim of supplying the nation’s retail jewelers with fine colored gemstones. I also longed to communicate through writing and lecturing. There, I could combine my love of rocks and cultures with world travel, let my creative instincts fly through jewelry design and use my people skills with marketing and communication. Finishing college, working in the colored gem trade was my life’s desire.
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