handmade colourful jewelry
I always knew I was going to have a craft business, it was just a matter of time. I have to say I’ve come a long way since my first experience, at age… 6! I then used to follow my mother to work. She’s a professional artist and sells her work on the famous “Rue du Trésor” in the heart of Old Quebec City. To do just like mom, I would make drawings, post them on a stone wall next to the portrait artists, and sell them for $0.25 each. My goal was to save $20 by the end of the summer, which I reached on my first day! I guess we can say it was my first success story.
For ten years, I worked as a hairwrapper. I would make these hair decorations out of pearled cotton, and my handmade polymer clay beads. I practiced that technique in the summer, in the Old Quebec City, next to where I’d started… ten years before!
It’s sort of a coincidence if I became a jewelry designer. I would rather say jewelry came to me! A trip to San Francisco in November 1999 is what really got things started. To pay my expenses, I had planned to “hairwrap” my way thru California. I had brought all the material necessary, but my bohemian dream ended very quickly. A very polite policeman stopped me on my very first day of work, but suggested I apply as street artists instead, thru the San Francisco street artist commission. I followed his advice, and from then on, everything fell in place. I got a permit in time for the holydays shopping season and the hairwrap material became improvised colourful jewelry. After a month and a half there, working 5 hours a day, I was able to pay my hotel, my meals (in the Italian quarter, mmm!) and a plane ticket back to Canada. If I had accomplished so much with less than the basics, that is 2 styles of necklaces and bracelets, a booth made of a camping table and pieces of cardboard, I thought “Let’s give this a serious try, I’m on to something!.”
So by January 2000, Sophiori was officially born! I now realize that all my past experiences merged into what is today Sophiori: watercolorist for professional artists for more than 7 years, hairwrapper for ten years, my natural abilities and interests for everything manual and artistic (painting, drawing, sculpture, sewing, self-taught polymer clay techniques, crafts of all sorts, etc.), my studies in art in college and university, as well as my metalsmithing training with internship in Key West, Florida.
My colourful jewelry is the result of my passions for art, color, texture, ornaments, and most of all of Love and Life!!!