Welcome to Jewels & Journeys-First installment!
Jan. 27, 2021
Welcome to the first installment of “Jewels & Journeys with Renee”.
It’s hard to know where to start. The beginning of my jewellery journey, the years in the middle, or what’s happening currently in my jewellery world. I have customers who have been purchasing my designs almost from the day I started, way back in the late 70’s, as a struggling college student. And now because of Covid, I have a whole new audience of women purchasing my jewellery for the first time. I can only put this down to more time spent online and more people comfortable ordering from a web based business. Word of mouth is also important, and I have always had first time orders from women who “saw your pieces” on their girlfriend. I have sold thousands of pieces of my (mostly) one of a kind treasures—collected & enjoyed by countless women far and wide.
Sri Lanka-Pearl of the Indian Ocean & Teardrop of India!
Today’s journey, randomly selected, is a peek into my trip to the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, a few years ago. Hubby and I spent 10 remarkable days journeying from one end of the island to the other. The main focus as always with my travels, is sourcing goodies to create with, in this case gemstones. Sri Lanka is known for its tea, lush beauty and of course Sapphires, and it was mainly Sapphires we were after. We visited stone cutting workshops, ruff’ and raw stone shops, and ultimately two sapphire mine, which was one of the best parts of the trip. (See photo of me me standing at one of these mines.)
As always, the highlights of our travels is meeting people, and this trip to Sri Lanka was no different. We became fast friends with our driver who carefully and thoughtfully drove us for the better part of a week. We also became buddies with some of the guys at the mines, although they were never able to talk me down into one, no matter how much they tried! (See photos.)
We did source some nice sapphires and other semi precious stones that I’ve used in my jewellery creations, but the real joy of the trip was the majestic beauty of the island.
The trip ended on Valentines Day, with a last night in the Capital city of Colombo. We spent just one night at the most amazing boutique hotel, complete with a butler for each room. This was the first and only time this has happened in all my travels, and let me just say, it was a bit delightful!
We woke up at the crack of dawn the next day and made our way to the airport and flew on to India, for another two weeks, again sourcing stones. That’s another story for another post.
Hope you enjoyed this little peek into one of my many trips and travels around this remarkable planet, we call home!
xoxox
Renee
