This photo was taken a few years ago, but I can still feel the giddy happiness I felt sitting among these amazing striped rocks along a beautiful New Hampshire beach.
For me, there has always been something magical about finding a stone. I can sit for hours searching through the sand and pebbles, picking up one treasure after another, studying the colors, patterns, textures, and little details that make each one completely unique. These beautiful beach stones inspired so many pieces of jewelry, and I loved finding ways to highlight their natural patterns and personalities.
There is a wonderful piece of folklore surrounding stones with a white band that travels completely around them. These are often called wishing stones or lucky stones. The unbroken line is believed to bring good fortune, and in some traditions, you make a wish while tracing your finger around the continuous band. There is something especially beautiful about the symbolism of that unbroken circle—a reminder of connection, continuity, possibility, and perhaps a little bit of magic.
If you know me, you know the way straight to my heart is through stones. Gemstones, beach stones, unusual specimens—it really doesn’t matter. I love them all! Apparently, this fascination started very early. My mom says that when I was only two years old, I would fill my little pockets with rocks everywhere I went.
Looking back now, I have to laugh because maybe the signs were there all along.
Funny how the universe begins leaving little clues about who we are meant to become long before we understand them ourselves. A little girl filling her pockets with stones probably had no idea that one day those same treasures would become part of her life’s work.
Today, gemstones and natural specimens still speak to me in much the same way. I see color, texture, movement, history, and possibility. Every stone has its own personality, and often it is the stone itself that begins to guide the design. My job is simply to listen, imagine, and bring its beauty forward.
Maybe that is one of the lessons I keep coming back to: if we pay attention, the clues to our passions are often there from the very beginning.
Sometimes they are hidden in the things we are naturally drawn to.
Sometimes they are found in the little treasures we collect.
And sometimes, if we are lucky, we spend our lives discovering that those early signs were quietly leading us exactly where we were meant to go.
