It’s always been a challenge to find time to recharge and do other things aside from work. As an Account Supervisor, I’m running from one meeting to the next conference call to responding to an email, while still managing clients’ needs and deadlines. It’s hustle and bustle. I’m sure you all can relate.

At the end of a long day, and like so many other Dashboardians, I need a creative outlet. I find my Zen at Organic Metal Gallery where Robin Gray teaches me how to carve, solder, shape and hammer silver and bronze into rings, earrings, bracelets, etc.

Q) How did you get into jewelry design?

A.  I was actually teaching English in Japan and I walked into an open jewelry studio, which was not completely unlike this, and I just stopped doing everything else. I went back every day and spent hours there and lost all sense of time (well you know what it’s like) and then decided that that was what I wanted to do.

Q) What were you doing before?

I actually went to school to be a high school teacher and I hated it. And so, I broke up with my boyfriend and went to teach English in Japan. Then when I came back to Toronto and opened up the shop, people started asking me to teach lessons and so I thought, “oh I know how to teach”, so I did both.

Q) The Organic part of your name suggests that you are sustainable in your business practice. Am I being presumptuous or is this true?

Our metal is fair trade, fair mined and it comes from Columbia. It’s called Oro Verde and you can look it up on the website. It’s got a beautiful explanation of what they do. They replant the trees; they filter the water – no footprint basically. We get our gold and platinum there.

We get our silver from a completely recyclable plant called Hoover & Strong. They’re smelters in the States and they are the only company that I know of that actually deal with any kind of … Silver comes from some mine out there, but there is so much silver out there already that can be reclaimed and refined with very low toxins.

Q) What inspires your designs?

All natural stuff. I can’t help but pick up stuff. I pick up plants wherever I go and yank things out of people’s gardens.

Q) What motivates you to grow your business?

I just wanted to do it for the love of it until I had kids and now I have to think about making money. Things do change. It becomes more of a business than just pursuing beautiful stuff. As people are more appreciative of the things I’m making, I’m realizing that my designs are marketable.

Q) As a small business owner, how important do you think it is to have a social media presence? What do you hope to achieve with it?

Well I’m actually discovering that it is very important. A couple of girls that have taken classes here have gotten on the web and baboom, they’re selling all kinds of stuff. I realized I could do that. I can expand my business. I think it is important now. I didn’t think so before, but I opened up an e-commerce site a year ago and (now I realize) it’s not just having the e-commerce site, it’s knowing how to work it and promote it and how to make it accessible to people.

Q) What is it about jewelry design that makes it such a female-dominated pursuit?

It’s funny. It didn’t used to be, but it is now. I think people want to express themselves and they want something personal to adorn themselves. A lot of the guys that I’ve talked to, the old jewelers, for the last fifteen years, it’s all very specific and geometric. It’s perfect and it’s about the stone but now, women know how to manipulate tools and can actually do it. It’s a marriage of two things… creativity and craftmanship.

Q) How do you differentiate yourself among the competition?

I don’t want to sound like cheese, but I care. I don’t want someone walking out just to have sold something. When someone loves it, that makes me happy. Someone came in the other week and bought a really beautiful and expensive necklace and she said, “Do you have earrings to match with that?” I made her a pair of earrings. I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t do.  I’ll create something for somebody because it’s not just for her; it’s for me too. I get to learn to make something new.