How I Learnt Jewellery Making While Travelling the World with alison powell (podcast episode)
What does it take to learn jewellery making while travelling the world? In this episode, Jess chats with Alison Powell, who began her jewellery-making journey in Tanzania and has continued developing her skills while living in Lebanon and Venezuela. From packing tools into suitcases to completing projects around international flights, Alison has found ways to keep learning despite some unusual challenges, including a war and an earthquake! She shares how her jewellery-making skills and personal style have developed, why she struggled to call herself a 'real jeweller' and how she's preparing to launch her own business, Avila Jewellery Designs. They also discuss the importance of having a supportive community of fellow jewellers, wherever in the world you happen to be.
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Learning jewellery making while travelling the world isn't always straightforward. There are tools and materials to transport, projects to complete and deadlines to meet. And that's before you factor in international moves, a war and an earthquake!
In this episode of the Jewellers Academy podcast, Jess is joined by Alison Powell, who has spent the last five years learning jewellery making while living in different countries around the world. What started with a Christmas present in Tanzania has developed into a passion for jewellery making and plans to launch her own business, Avila Jewellery Designs.
Jess and Alison chat about the practicalities of learning a hands-on craft while regularly moving countries, how Alison has developed her own jewellery-making style and why she's now getting ready to turn her passion into a business.
Listen to the episode
In this episode of the Jewellers Academy podcast, Jess and Alison discuss:
How Alison discovered jewellery making while living in Tanzania.
The practicalities of learning jewellery making online while travelling and moving between countries.
What happened when war and an earthquake disrupted her training.
How Alison has developed her skills and discovered her love of organic, sculptural jewellery.
The story behind a very personal locket inspired by her time in Venezuela.
Why she struggled to call herself a 'real jeweller', despite several years of learning.
How she's preparing to launch Avila Jewellery Designs and what she's planning for her first collection.
The role of community, mentoring and support in helping her continue learning wherever she lives.
Listen to How I Learnt Jewellery Making While Travelling the World with Alison Powell on the Jewellers Academy podcast.
Learning jewellery making online from Tanzania
Alison's introduction to jewellery making was in 2021 when her husband bought her a jeweller's toolkit for Christmas. She'd already been thinking that she'd love to make her own silver jewellery, so she started looking for tutorials on YouTube. That's how she discovered Jewellers Academy.
At the time, Alison was living in Tanzania and hadn't realised that it would be possible to learn jewellery making online with professional jewellers, get feedback on her work and work towards a qualification without needing to attend classes in person.
She signed up for the Diploma in Silver Jewellery that September, initially thinking that jewellery making would be a hobby. However, once she started learning, she wanted to find out what else she could make.
She went on to study more advanced silversmithing, goldsmithing, stone setting and silver metal clay, and is now learning wax carving.
But fitting all that jewellery making around her life has required some creative problem-solving.
Making jewellery through international moves, a war and an earthquake
After Tanzania, Alison moved to Lebanon, where she began her next year of jewellery training. When war broke out, she had to return to the UK, packing her jewellery-making tools and equipment into a couple of suitcases.
She's since moved to Venezuela and has continued learning while travelling between countries with her husband.
Having a workshop full of tools is one thing. Having to work out which tools you can fit in your luggage, which projects can be done in a hotel room and how to access specialist equipment in different countries is something else.
And then there was the earthquake.
Alison was working on her Silver Metal Clay Diploma when an earthquake in Venezuela meant she couldn't return to her workshop as planned. She had some of her materials with her in Panama, but her kiln and other equipment were still in Venezuela.
When she eventually returned, she had several challenging projects to finish, including a lidded vessel, her final project and a particularly complicated poison ring. One of her biggest worries was whether the fragile, unfired poison ring had survived the earthquake. Fortunately, despite things having fallen from the walls of her workshop, it was still intact.
With another flight approaching, Alison found herself working until 2am trying to complete her projects. The lidded vessel was still in the kiln the night before she was due to leave!
With support from her Jewellers Academy mentors, she was able to complete her assessments. Despite everything that had happened, Alison achieved 98% in the final term of her Silver Metal Clay Diploma.
It's certainly not the usual way to complete a jewellery-making course, but Alison has become very good at adapting her plans and finding ways to continue learning wherever she happens to be.
Finding her own jewellery-making style
As Alison has developed her jewellery-making skills, she's also become more confident about experimenting with her own designs.
In the early days, she was focused on learning techniques and following project instructions. Now she enjoys looking at the requirements of a project and thinking about how she can interpret them in her own way. She's particularly drawn to organic, contemporary and sculptural jewellery, which is one reason she enjoyed working with silver metal clay so much.
One of her favourite pieces is a locket she designed for her final metal clay project, inspired by her time living in Venezuela.
The outside of the locket represents the contours of the Ávila mountain range, which she can see from her studio. Inside, she created a miniature scene featuring a hummingbird surrounded by flowers and gemstones, inspired by the wildlife she sees on her walks in the mountains. Alison also hopes to add a small compartment inside the locket to hold some of her mother's ashes, making it an especially personal piece.
The project brought together many of the techniques she'd learnt over the years, including hinges, intricate carving and stone setting.
She's now taking those interests further through wax carving, which she's particularly excited about because of the possibilities for creating organic and sculptural designs.
It also offers some practical advantages for someone who travels as much as Alison. Rather than needing to take all her metalworking equipment with her, she can create pieces in wax and send them away to be cast.
From learning jewellery making to starting a jewellery business
Although Alison initially thought of jewellery making as a hobby, she's now preparing to launch her own business, Avila Jewellery Designs.
The name comes from the Ávila mountain range in Venezuela, which overlooks her studio and has become an important source of inspiration for her work.
Alison has been developing her business through the Jewellery Business Academy, working on her branding, social media presence and plans for her first collection.
Because she doesn't yet know which country she'll be living in when she launches, she's had to approach things a little differently. Rather than rushing into selling, she's been using the time to work through the different elements of starting a business.
One area she's found particularly challenging is showing herself on social media.
For a long time, Alison preferred to share her jewellery rather than appear in photographs or videos herself. She also admits that, despite all the skills she'd learnt, she struggled to think of herself as a 'real jeweller'.
It's something that many people experience when they start learning a new craft, particularly when they're surrounded by others who seem much more experienced.
Through mentoring and an Instagram challenge with Jewellers Academy, Alison has started becoming more comfortable putting herself out there. She even managed to share a photograph of herself while travelling, having previously avoided doing so.
And now she's appearing on the podcast, something she says she could hardly believe when Jess first invited her!
Alison is hoping to launch her first collection in 2027, with plans to explore selling online, approaching galleries and possibly offering jewellery-making workshops.
The importance of finding a jewellery-making community
One of the things Alison talks about throughout the episode is how valuable the Jewellers Academy community has been to her.
Moving between countries can make it difficult to build lasting connections, but through her jewellery courses she's made friends, joined WhatsApp groups and developed relationships with other makers who share her interests.
She's also been able to access advice from tutors and mentors when her circumstances have made things particularly complicated.
For Alison, that support has meant she can continue developing her jewellery-making skills and business plans without having to put everything on hold each time she moves.
Her advice to anyone thinking about learning jewellery making is to get started, ask questions and document what you're doing from the beginning. Looking back, she wishes she'd started sharing her jewellery journey on Instagram much earlier.
And if you're worried about whether studying jewellery making will work around your particular circumstances, Alison recommends talking through those concerns before deciding it isn't possible.
Follow Alison's jewellery-making journey
You can find Alison on Instagram at Avila Jewellery Designs, where she shares her jewellery, her creative process and occasional glimpses of the beautiful mountain views from her studio.
Instagram: @avilajewellerydesigns
Learn jewellery making with Jewellers Academy
Alison has developed her jewellery-making skills through several Jewellers Academy Diploma courses and is now preparing to launch her own jewellery business.
Find out more about our Diploma courses: https://www.jewellersacademy.com/diplomas
Explore the Jewellery Business Academy: https://www.jewellersacademy.com/the-jewellery-business-academy