Meet the Maker: AnniesMix’dMetllez
 
Meet Annie, owner of AnniesMix’dMetllez. Fun fact, she came up the name while sitting at the Lucky Shag!

Small Business Growth in a Post-Covid World
 
Her first piece ever sold was a commission for the mum of a lady at Annie’s work. After this she had a jewellery party at her house with friends and colleagues and it was a great success. Annie started selling her beautiful items on Etsy in August 2020. Her first ever market was the Applecross Rotary Jacaranda Festival in November 2020. She did well although I didn’t realise it until after the day had finished. After a period of growth, Annie now does a few different markets regularly and she loves every minute. Annie’s main goal is to promote her beautiful products on social media, and to garner an online following.

When Inspiration Hits…
 
Annie has a studio set up in her garage. Originally, her studio was under the back patio, but she found it too hot in the summer heat. She moved into the garage, and it’s perfect. She finds inspiration for her designs all around her. She closely observes the type of jewellery that people are wearing, she scrolls through Pinterest and even watches TV to pick up on what is popular. She combines all her ideas and observations together to come up with a concept for a piece.
 
Often, inspiration hits at the most inconvenient time. Annie knows that her strength lies in her ideas and not in her artistic skills, so she prefers to use words to describe her designs in a “visual” diary alongside a very basic sketch.
 
Her design process is also very organic. She sits down in her studio, and she start playing with the metal and shapes and stones. She adds a bit and takes a bit away, and slowly a piece emerges. These are often her favourite pieces. She likes to make unique pieces that are chunky and bold. She makes jewellery to last a lifetime, making sure each piece is affordable without being undervalued. There is very little waste in Annie’s studio. Any silver off-cuts are melted down later to make other pieces.
 
Annie recently started working with pearls and this has been a steep learning curve. But she enjoyed the challenge of learning how to make a cage to set the pearls in.

Facing Some Challenges
 
Navigating social media and the online selling world has been Annie’s biggest challenge to date. Prior to setting up an Instagram account in 2020, Annie only had Facebook.
Annie is 56 this year and has not grown up with social media. At first, she felt that it was like learning a new language. She is slowly starting to understand social media and she’s found herself even enjoying it. 
 
Alongside this, Annie has found it challenging to photograph her jewellery. This was yet another skill to learn, but she now has a good set up for photoshoots. Annie is excited to keep developing all these skills to improve and promote AnniesMix’dMetllez, even though she would rather be in her studio making jewellery.