After 8 years at that jewellery company, I was in a senior management role, with no selling and much less creative input.
I decided to have a career break – I had been working since I was 15! - and me and my best friend Orla went to India, the start of a round-the-world trip for me. India was quite a culture shock because I hadn’t done the right of passage travelling that other friends had, but I loved Jaipur, the centre of jewellery making in India for centuries.
Within 2 years I had my beautiful daughter Marie, I worked briefly for another jewellery company, and was then headhunted for my last job at a luxury watch company where I spent 9 years, my last role as Head of Retail. Watches were different and interesting, but never my first love, but then 3 years ago the company was bought out by another company, and they had an in house Jewellery Brand! I got to visit the Atelier in Switzerland and be around all of the craftspeople again. After a great lunch with the creative director, we discussed lots of design and limited edition ideas and I thought, I can do this myself. That thought stuck in my head. I can do this myself.
2 years ago, for my 40th birthday, I became obsessed with finding a Victorian diamond swallow necklace. They were all out of my budget, well, my partner’s budget. And I thought again, I can do this myself.
I kept working, but I also kept little notebooks, at home, in my art studio that I had started to rent to scratch the creative itch that work just was not doing for me. I would sit and paint pictures of rock stars at night, I had been selling them for a few years on Instagram. I started keeping a little file of my drawings of jewellery on my computer. Then one day, I sent 3 drawings to a workshop in Jaipur, and said, can you make these for me? That was in September 2020, and that was the start of Sweet Marie Jewellery.