the story of how beautiful adventures came to be
Adventure meets design
how beautiful adventures came to be a unique jewelry company
It’s not every day that you wake up and decide to start a new company, or to change careers… Again. Yet, that is exactly what I’m doing, so I figure that at least now I’m old enough and experienced enough to be able to justify the decision well.
I’ve spent the last several years as a massage therapist, but as much as I love assisting others with keeping their body healthy and pain free and being able to connect with people on a different level, the mechanics of it have started to take a toll on my body and unfortunately, I still haven’t found the magical fountain of youth.
Starting a new career is a little scary, but for my husband, Jonathan, and I, it made sense to combine our passions together into something we could sink our teeth into and enjoy together every step of the way.
The idea for Beautiful Adventures culminated from so many different things, though, so I’ll explain how we came up with what might seem like a totally random idea of “adventure inspired jewelry.”
Jonathan was on a business trip to Australia years ago and discovered the unique opal that is found there. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before with so many brilliant colors and patterns. He loved it so much that he ended up learning how to cut the raw opal and gained a new hobby.
Fast forward to several years and hundreds of loose opal gems later, and Jonathan met me. He discovered right away how much I love glitter and sparkles (I’ll save that story for another post) and so he decided to pull out his cutting wheel that had started to collect dust after being forgotten with life’s distractions, and share with me the art of cutting opal. He showed me how to cut into the stone and chase down the thin layer of sparkly fine opal and although I was afraid of ruining it and cutting through all the good stuff, I was immediately hooked, and Jonathan was reminded of how much he loved his neglected hobby and it suddenly had new life.
how beautiful adventures came to be an awesome unique jewelry company
As we were getting to know each other, Jonathan seemed to be testing out my adventurous nature. He took me night hiking where we hiked to a waterfall deep in the mountains in the dark with no flashlights just to see how I’d respond. I, of course, took it in stride, which surprised him, and I led the way on the return trip. He took me canyoneering where we rappelled down steep cliffs. I was honestly shocked that even with my fear of heights, I wasn’t very scared at all and I actually wished the cliffs were a little higher so we could have had more of a rappel. He also took me skydiving, which is his all-time favorite thing to do. I had actually been skydiving before, but was thrilled for the opportunity to go again. Basically though, we spent much of our free time going on different types of adventures and having the time of our lives.
As our relationship progressed, oddly enough, so did the idea of turning our passions and hobbies into something more. It’s funny, because Jonathan’s background is completely technical and he has a long history in the software industry. That is completely opposite of my design and massage therapy background. He’s so technical and I constantly want to be creative and make things pretty, and I operate largely on an emotional and visual level. I think I’ve run the gamut of design experience from interior design, to wood and furniture painting, to sewing, to graphics, to photography and even scrapbooking. One thing we had in common though, was that we both had a history with making jewelry. I had done a bit with beading and bracelets at one point, but my favorite type of jewelry to make included stamping words into metal because they held meaning. Jonathan was largely self taught and had been making jewelry for gifts.
As the two of us began making jewelry together, I was learning how to do a lot of cool things which completely expanded the possibilities for me. Jonathan taught me how to cast and solder metal. We used his technical skills combined with my design skills to make 3D prints that we’d print out and then cast into silver.
Sometimes after we crafted a new piece of jewelry, Jonathan would post our projects to Facebook. Different friends started messaging him to ask if he’d make pieces for them. As we filled those requests, we noticed that they all had something in common. There was always a story behind the request being made.
As these stories showed up, and we’d hear about what different pieces we were making represented for different people, the more interesting the process became. I came to the realization that I already owned several pieces of jewelry that represented a memory or experience I had and we noticed that that’s exactly what our friends were doing. They were using the pieces to capture memories or experiences.
Another thing we noticed about the stories that were shared with us was that they were largely adventure based. The interesting thing to me though, was that people had many different levels of what they considered to be an adventure. For one person, it may have been skydiving. For another it was hiking. For another, it was traveling. Another’s was raising children, and another person’s adventure was falling in love. They were all over the map!
I had heard this a million times before, but it hit me again and with new perspective. Life is an adventure!
That’s when Beautiful Adventures was born.
We are constantly inspired by things that we see or do and other people are, too. We decided to design and create jewelry around those inspirations and experiences with the desire to connect with others and their adventures and stories.
We also decided that (at least for now) opal is our stone of choice. It’s my birthstone which carries some weight for me, but there is also so much depth and character in some opals that neither one of us has experienced with any other stone. It’s like each one tells its own story! The only problem we could see with creating adventure jewelry centered around opal is its durability. It wouldn’t be the wisest move to wear an opal banging around rocks in the jungle or climbing trees somewhere. An opal can be a beautiful reminder of canyoneering terrain or beaches or stars, but we wanted to also make sure we were creating something that CAN be worn out in the swamps fighting alligators or whatever calls you. (I don’t have that one on my bucket list).
Ultimately, we came up with our “Signature Collection” that includes the opals and everything we love about them, but we will also continue to design other collections that don’t feature opals so that the pieces have a lot more durability and can be worn out adventuring or wherever you choose and not have to worry so much about the safety of the jewelry.
We are so excited about this new endeavor and we hope you are, too. Please follow along with us on our adventures and more importantly, share your own stories with us! We would love to hear all about what inspires you and what wonderful and beautiful adventures you are creating in your life.
how beautiful adventures came to be a jewelry company