Craft | Meet Our Makers

This week we take a deep dive into the creative process, craftsmanship and passion that is invested into each and every piece of jewellery we create. 

Georgie, founder of Wanderlust Life, is a creative by trade and background & a self taught jeweller. She began to create designs she herself wanted to wear, and at conception stage created our best-selling signature fine cord when looking for a piece of minimal semi-precious jewellery that encapsulated her love for understated design, sentiment and passion for travel and creative living.

Based in our newly built shop & studio in North Devon, we design and create our own jewellery, by hand and under the direction of founder Georgie. If you were to describe the studio in one word it would be ‘collaborative’. Georgie works hard to develop new concepts, launching biannual collections; Becky, our Studio Manager, brings the concepts to life and our team of extremely talented jewellery makers work tirelessly to perfect and develop each piece.

Much of our inspiration does in fact come from our customers; having the shop and workshop in the same space means we are able to experience first hand reactions which in turn help to form future collections. The shared open plan ‘customer and creator’ space also allows us to work completely transparently; inviting customers in to see our creative process is something we are incredibly passionate about.

Like most creators, we don’t always get our designs right first time. Some pieces are received better than others, and some simply don’t make it past the concept stage. Travel experiences, collecting visual reference points, structural sketches, prototypes, material testing and logistics form the most part of our creative process.

Concept Development

With our biannual collections, we wanted to explore new designs to push Wanderlust Life to new and unprecedented territory, and for this we needed to think outside of the box. To help us develop some of the more ambitious designs in our Wear Kinship collection, we partnered with a traditional goldsmith. Our collaborators are based in the Birmingham jewellery quarter, the pieces that they make are hand crafted but we benefit from their expertise, skill and machinery, whilst relieving us of the limitations we face in the workshop.

Collaboration

We work with extremely detailed creative briefs and often the prototypes arrive, technically exactly as we have requested but in reality the piece doesn’t flow or sit well on the wearers body. From concept to launch our creative process often takes around 6 months and we aim to launch bi-annual collections to keep up with current jewellery trends and develop our best selling designs.

>When we get this collaborative process right, we produce something really unique like our best selling Ear Jackets, although not everything makes the final edit, we’re still experimenting with debossing our gemstone into gold & haven’t yet executed it in a way that feels true to our minimal & understated design principles.

Our new Demi Luna ring features a hand poured black enamel half moon silhouette that sits within a fine gold vermeil bezel on a 9k brushed gold fill ring. Our Goldsmith partners, technical expertise & experience working with gold plated silver enabled us to bring this design to life.

What's Next

We have new gemstones in the pipeline and even more innovation within the jewellery design itself; a few key pieces we are focusing on our ear jackets and jewellery that features our signature gemstones set into gold. Alongside developing new products we are pushing our existing designs; pieces that have been well received are often redeveloped in the workshop to evolve the current aesthetic. Once we have all of the prototypes ready, we lay them out to review, choosing only a select few that will make it into the final collection.<>