I'm Lynda, a Jeweller who as of the 18th of May 2025, has reached the awesome milestone of working at Shetland Jewellery for 10 whole years.
Leaving the education system at the age of 20, with a few qualifications but pretty much no idea how to make use of them, I took up a menial job to tide me over. Trying to find a job as an introvert was hard going but I hoped one day I'd be able to find something I enjoyed doing. A couple of years later I heard through the grapevine (thanks Dad) that there might be a job going at Shetland Jewellery so I decided to try get an interview and thankfully they gave a broke lass with a creative streak a chance. I'm very glad they did.
Over the years I've learnt so much, from the very basics like sawing silver neatly (trying to get a trophy plate perfectly straight and shiny is an absolute trial to a beginner) to being able to finish hundreds of stock peices and creations of my own. If I had to explain in full the sheer amount of things I've learned this blog post would be about 20 pages long, so I'll spare you that. Instead I'll tell you about the feeling of pride you get from making jewellery. When I think about where I was at in the first year or two, struggling not to melt stuff and soldering bits on squint, going googly eyed from trying to polish to a good standard and having to redo it anyway, it makes me realise just how far I've come. I slowly but surely mastered the basics, now it's like second nature and theres a lot less struggling. There will always be the odd day where nothing goes right and I'd love to launch a troublesome piece into the loch, but it all gets sorted in the end. Its a great feeling being able to take something from start to finish, especially when you get to enamel a piece and the colours end up being really pretty, everybody likes playing with the colours. In the time I've been here I've seen new services, types of jewellery, lots of ranges and colour schemes. We're always learning and evolving.
In 2017 I went to the mainland to learn wax carving, so I could take a skill back to the workshop and give others some pointers so they could learn it too. I've since been able to make special commissions and some of my jewellery ranges using wax carving techniques. Once you get the hang of it its a very handy skill to have.
I've created a few different ranges, the first was the unicorns 8 years ago, they'll always have a special place in my heart. Then it was the sheep, inspired by having loads of biscuit loving pet sheep when I was younger and wanting to make a Christmas gift for my mam. In recent years I've been doing quite a few runes pieces, they're my favourite thing to carve in wax, even if it takes a while to do them (perfectionist here) Every time I see one of my pieces on an order sheet I smile, that feeling never gets old. There's not many jobs you can get that level of satisfaction from, its pretty damn cool knowing that people from far away places are wearing the jewellery you've laboured over. I'm really proud that I decided to take this career path all those years ago, and if everyone can tolerate me till retirement age I'll probably be here for many years to come.
No regrets.
Lynda's ranges are here;
