Artist Spotlight - JewlLi

Silver, gemstones and sea glass are the three favorite materials you’ll find artist and jewelry maker Julie of JewlLi, working and creating with in her Lawrence, KS studio. Julie says she’s always found, “… that I am just happiest when I’m being creative.” After exploring many, many artistic mediums through workshops and classes, she finally found her true passion - jewelry making. “After a couple of metalsmithing classes,” she says, “I was hooked. It is pretty much what I think about 90% of the day!”

Julie uses sliver, gemstones and sea glass to create beautiful necklaces, earrings, bracelets and her favorite to design, rings. “Sometimes I just sit down with a jar of sea glass, hold the pieces in my hands and wonder what object they used to be … a bottle, a jar, someone’s dinnerware? It’s fun to imagine it’s prior life before it becomes a pendant or a ring.”

When designing a piece, Julie typically looks to color and nature to find inspiration for what direction to take with a collection of beads, or piece of sea glass. But when she doesn’t have a specific plan in mind, “I let the piece sort of take on its own direction. Sometimes, that’s when I make the best pieces.”

Recently, Julie has been experimenting with torch fired enameling and the results are stunning! She currently has beautiful earrings (like the red heart earrings pictured above) and pendants in shades of vibrant red, blue green, and aqua listed in her shop using this technique.

You can find Julie’s beautiful one-of-a-kind jewelry at her Etsy shop - JewlLi, Broer’s Flower shop in Eudora, KS, and at First Fridays, March 7^th, at Shiraz Restaurant.