A cool "maker" I admire - Tamara Bavdek of This Ilk! It won't be hard to see why that is after you read on for a bit.
This Ilk is Bavdek's Canada-based shop on Etsy, featuring mainly handcrafted statement jewelry made with vintage lace (there, that's the reason!!). She does all of the work herself, including sourcing materials, making the pieces, photography, graphic work, and running the business, with some help from a friend. What's most interesting is that she majored in Industrial Design in college! As she says of her education:
My industrial design background pushes me to constantly reinvent the notion of jewelry, or even simply the wearable. I want to surprise people with well-thought-out designs, and I enjoy using materials in ways no one has ever seen. In my case, sometimes the lace is the chain, the ornament, the link, or the bead in my designs. I think that that is what sets This Ilk apart; I have this constant urge to innovate in one way or another and improve my techniques.
Her jewelry pieces are very neat, and from the student point of view, it's also just really cool to see this example of another type of career path we have open to us after college!
- Maisie
(photos and quotes taken from Etsy)