Story

I love getting to know people and hearing their stories. I like to read other designers' stories when I visit their websites, that's why I also share mine here.

I haven't planned to be a jewellery maker. I tried almost everything else first.

I studied cosmetology and dreamed of a career in marketing and management in cosmetics. During my whole studying time, I worked in gastronomy, and travelled throughout the country on the weekends to attend parties and festivals.

After graduating, I spent several years as a beauty consultant. I worked as a professional makeup artist in fashion, film, and photography. I loved this work, but it was pretty toxic. Eventually, I grew tired of all of it and burned out.

I still wanted to learn, tho, develop and work with people - I found out about Service Design and began to study it in Warsaw. It gave me new energy and direction in my life. Later moved into IT for a few years. After an intense learning and growing curve, I moved to Sweden, hopeful to land a full-time job as a Service Designer. 

I never got the job I dreamed about. I was working in random jobs, juggling tech conferences and meetups, networking, my first therapy and reevaluating my life.

And then, 2020 came, and everything stopped. Looking for something that would refresh my creativity, I enrolled into a full-time course at Hyper Island Stockholm. I got in, and it felt like a new start. Full of hope, that I will turn things around, I started what should be a creative-in-person-collaboration sessions, which unfortunately changed into 8-hour-in-front-of-the-computer sessions.

As you may imagine, getting disappointed again and again, and now sitting closed home, did not work out for me well. I tried different ways to rescue my psyche: therapy, yoga and meditation helped, but I craved something manual.

Then one evening, I scrolled through my phone, and I saw a photo of a stone necklace that I had never seen before. And my first thought was: I could make that. That moment sparked everything. With time, I bought the first materials and started experimenting and creating jewellery. And further, the first people started noticing and wanting to buy my stuff.

After graduating and finishing an internship that didn’t lead anywhere, I faced another wave of uncertainty in 2022, with war in Ukraine and the upcoming economic crash. That’s when I thought: Now or never. I registered Stones and Stuff Stockholm.

So as I said - jewellery was never the plan, but looking back, it all fits. I have a set of useful skills to run the company. I’ve worked in sales, fashion, and e-commerce. I studied service design and content creation, which helps me to manage this website and carry on with brand management in general.

Moreover, I’ve always loved stones, pearls, and crystals, when I was FASCINATED by their colours, structures and glimmer during stone fairs visiting as a kid with my parents.

Jewellery gave me what I couldn’t find in a traditional career: space to create, manage, and grow. It became my biggest passion and job — and a way to meet incredible people like you.

This brand is not just mine — it’s ours.

That’s why:

  • Every model is named after the first person who bought it
  • I offer custom orders, made just for you
  • I repair, remake, and upcycle your old jewellery — giving new life to forgotten materials - read about the services I offer
  • I welcome your ideas and feedback, always!

Thank you for being here.
Julia

 

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Questions? Write me!