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Maria tells us about herself and her work in the interview below.
Q. Tell us a little about yourself.
A. My name is Maria and I'm 23. I live in Navia, a little town in the north coast of Spain in a community called Asturias. The best thing of living here is that Navia is a really quiet place. We have nearly all the facilities of a city concentrated in a little town but seasoned with sea, mountanins and countryside. You can relax walking trough the beach , the port... but also you can go shopping or to the gym. I think we have a good mix here and an enviable landscape.
Q. What kind of jewelry work do you do?
A. My jewelry is 100% handmade. I don't like wax casting though I learned how to do it. I prefer the direct contact with the metals and the uniqueness of something handmade. I work with sterling silver, natural gemstones with unique shapes and cultured pearls (I would like to point that I always hated pearls and look now!! You can never say never!!.) From some months ago I'm also including gold in my creations. What I like best doing is one of a kind pieces. I have a new collection in my Etsy shop that is called Criaturas Marinas (Sea Creatures) composed by ooak jewels featuring natural cabochons of fossilized corals. I really enjoyed working on that so if I could, I'd never repeat a piece. I easily get bored of doing the same day by day, I feel like I am stagnant. If you check my shop you'll see that I love oxidized silver and textures. Oxidized silver is a great opcion for combining it with colorful gemstones, it gives a great contrast and I like it a lot. I think that my designs are closer to the minimalism as I don't like very ornated jewelry.
Q. Where did you learn to make jewelry?
A. For making jewelry I studied in a jewelry school in Oviedo during 3 years. There I learned jewelry with a classical basis, gemmology, wax casting and setting. When I finished bachellor I decided that I wanted a job where I could use my imagination and also my hands. I didn't want to study years and years for ending working sitted in a desk, that is not for me. The fact is that since I was little I enjoyed arts and crafts and art was the subject I most enjoyed in school.
Q. What was your most exciting piece to make?
A.
As I said before I enjoy every ooak piece I do but I think that I would choose the Verne Ring. I felt in love with labradorites since I bought some in my friend's Denise's Shop and I wanted to do something special with them. It also was the first time I included gold in my work.Q. What is the most interesting story you have to tell about making a piece of jewelry?
A. Well, I would call it the most "creepy" story about making jewelry. Once I had to do a ring with a dissected beetle that a friend brought from a trip to Egypt. I couldn't believe that I had to do that so I tried to look at it as less as possible. Luckily for me I could end the ring without getting panic, I really don't like insects and less touching them neither if they don't move.
Q. Tell us about 3 of your pieces.
A.
This is the first pendant/brooch I did from the Criaturas Marinas Collection. Once I did it tons of ideas emerged for making the rest of the colection, so I'll be including more pieces soon. It took me 13 hours for making it so is the piece that took me more work of everything I did.A.
This ring is the most strange piece I ever did. For me it was a therapeutic piece because it was the first ooak piece I did after being months going to craft shows with nearly the same items. I needed to break that monotony so I just improvised; and this is the result.A.
This is the first ring I made once I left the jewelry school and is also the ring I most sold since I started working on my own. I never could thought that this ring would have so sucess. I did it with a lot of different gemstones, but I'll always prefer it with black Onyx.
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