Enjoy my conversation with Kameron!Transcript Follows
Madhav SBSS 0:03
I’m super elated to introduce my featured guest for today, Cameron. Cameron, are you prepared to crush it?
Kameron 0:10
Oh, yes.
Madhav SBSS 0:12
Thank you. Awesome. That’s way to go. trauma. Cameron is a authentic, handmade jewelry designer loves to make meaningful jewelry. He runs his own store online, argue art jewelry.com. And he lives in Barcelona and Cameron, I gave the Creator nation a brief glimpse of your life and your business and your passions, please fill in some gaps and give us a quick run on your personal story and your business.
Kameron 0:46
Well, I moved to Barcelona eight and a half years ago, and been having a wonderful time. It’s an amazing thing to have the opportunity to, to experience a very full life and see things from a different point of view. And I became interested in making jewelry when I moved here. And it’s one of those things that that I just picked up and just never could put down. It’s, it’s a passion. And addiction is something I really enjoy. And one of the things that I’ve enjoyed more in my life really enjoy making truly meaningful things for people. Well, whether it be making engagement rings and wedding rings also do a lot of taking jewelry that was from a grandmother or the grandparents a wedding wedding rings and recycling them,
Madhav SBSS 2:13
there’s an emotional connection to the hang. It’s not just a ring.
Kameron 2:17
Yeah, I mean, a lot of times are really, really worn out and just scratched the pieces. But I do really, really do a lot of those with our we’re recycling them into newer bands, or newer settings or, you know, using things that are that are meaningful to the people to begin with, to have those used into their new Marines. Super. So yeah, I’m doing what I love to do, and I enjoy every day of it. Just enjoy every day of it.
Madhav SBSS 3:00
Great to hear that’s a beautiful start. And create a nation we’d love to start off with a quote or a line in a song or anything that sort of inspires you to keep going and making this beautiful craft. Anything that you could share with our listeners.
Kameron 3:16
Really, if there’s anything I would say, more than anything is the really overused phrase, just do it. Just do it. Do it. You know, don’t don’t be complacent sitting in front of a TV, you know, mindlessly watching a commercial, you know, when you could be doing something that you loved to be doing. Or something that you’ve never tried. You know, you never know what what you can do until you actually just drive to do it. Yeah. And
Madhav SBSS 3:54
how do you that’s such a beautiful just do it even though it’s a cliche as you said, but it is so so crucial because most people sort of get stuck in that first step of oh, do I have the skills do I have this to have that and so just do it and you’ll start picking up so how do you apply it or how did you apply this just doing mantra in your own journey?
Kameron 4:15
Really I I just picked up some metal one day and and and melted it and some some silver I just had some scrap silver and I melted it and I thought well you know the the people from ancient times beat things out the rocks I can surely do it with a hammer. And and I did I got some silver and melted it and made myself a little form. And you know, before long I figured out oh well I can make this into a strip and I can make the strip in the shape that I want. If I sit here and concentrate a little bit you know I can get To do something, and
Madhav SBSS 5:03
to just do it, and you found something in your house, what you had you start with what you have where you were, and didn’t get stuck in? No, I don’t have that I don’t have this, where do I get that? What about like, did you when you started off? Did you start thinking, I’m going to build all these kinds of rings and jewelry, and this and that. And however, we want to do all that and get all analysis paralysis kind of thing.
Kameron 5:26
Now, I was exactly the opposite. I didn’t think about the data at all. From the first time that I figured out, I could make a hoop, you know, then I thought, Oh, well, I want to make another hoop. And now I want to make a hoop with a stone in it. And so forth and so on. And the the idea of selling those things was really, the last time I thought about it, you know, I eventually got to a point where I had so many of these little hoops. And so many of these little hoops were stones in them, that I had to start selling them to make more
Madhav SBSS 6:10
can you share quickly about the story in the pre recording, you were talking about how you made a ring for your daughter, and how it sort of spread in the in the neighborhood and
Kameron 6:21
right? That first piece of metal that I made, my daughter wanted to ring me that three year old princess and she wants a princess array. So of course I go looking all around and in most markets, child approved jewelry doesn’t exist anymore. It hasn’t has or somebody who’s gonna choke on, you know, somebody who’s gonna put their eye out. And they just don’t exist anymore. But, uh, you know, you can go down to the five and dime and there’s 10,000 little plastic rings for little girls. So I thought, okay, my mom had a baby room when she was little, and they existed. And I’m gonna make one. And that first strip of silver that I hammered out was my daughter, Calvin, Calvary. And, you know, one of the neighbor’s kids saw her ring. And then the neighbor’s daughter wanted a princess ring to her buddy wanted a princess ring too. And then because of the buddy wanted to purchase her into there, and it just kind of snowballed to the point where, you know, really, for the first, probably year, I don’t know how many kids rooms that I sold. And I still do a few of them. But it’s not the main, the main focus,
Madhav SBSS 8:00
a discarded song got you started and there was personal need or an itch or something that you wanted to create for your daughter, but that you couldn’t find in the market. And that got you started. Like people say, you know, a lot of the times the idea is right under your nose, you might not see it. If you pay attention to it, and you’ve paid attention, your inner self as opposed to all the distractions and noise outside, you can see it clearly.
Kameron 8:27
Yes,
Madhav SBSS 8:29
in, in our recording, we try to focus on your journey and try to, you know, pull out those nuggets of wisdom and things that happened to you along your journey. One of the big things that we look at is or talk about is a big failure that you might have encountered in your journey as a authentic meaningful jewelry maker. Can you share a failure that you encountered and how you recover
Kameron 8:55
from it? Oh, yes, yes. Well, anytime you’re working with with precious diamonds, you know, the those items aren’t called Diamond. And especially with with emeralds, and morganite some of the softer precious stone, just one touch when you’re setting those stones, and it’s broken glass. And so I have a little I have a little box with broken stones. And you know, still occasionally I will be you know, setting us down and you just don’t treat it just like the most delicate flower and you’re gonna chip on or break one. And it’s just, it’s just part of the journey.
Madhav SBSS 9:53
Did it happen to you in a way in a situation where you were actually supposed to deliver the ring for a wedding or something are, you know that you chip stone? And like, how do you get out of that? Like, would you just kill yourself? You know, like, why did you do this? Why was I neglecting that? How do you get out of that?
Kameron 10:13
The first time I did. The first time I did the first time, the first one I ever broke, that was for delivery. Of course, I didn’t just chip it, you know, it’s like I said, a thermonuclear bomb underneath it. And just scattered it into a million pieces. But after having to explain to my customer, look, I broke this down, I’ve got another it’s, it’s better than better than the stone that I was going to put in for you that you had selected. Or you bought out of my internet shop. And I’ve got one here that’s nicer. It’s better clarity. And I’ll put this one in for the same price. The first one that I kind of ate some crow. And then I learned after that one, that if I do I have a style that is set. I generally have to just in case,
Madhav SBSS 11:28
have a backup. Say no you do. So that’s one way to sort of get out of if you happen to come across a failure, whether you’re making something and you fail, it’s not the be all end all you can always write it and move on. And terms of moving on to the next on the opposite side of the spectrum. In sort of a failure. Was there something like a magical moment, an aha moment for you that got you started on this path or when you’re taking this path? That’s that sort of said, Hey, there’s a light bulb that went off and said, This is what I should be doing?
Kameron 12:07
Yeah, there’s a lot of those. There’s a lot of aha moments where you realize I could have done more. Or I could have done things better. And then there are those moments where customer requests request you to do something that you have the technical skill to do, but you’ve never just jump and do it. And you do something differently. You set a stone differently. You set horribly small stones in horribly small spaces, and you get it through it comes out great. And and then you think, Oh, great. I did that. That was such a beautiful ring. But I’ll never do that.
Madhav SBSS 13:08
That’s like, I run marathons. And I just did a marathon last weekend in Austin. And that’s like, when I finished 26.2 miles of running as a second. I said, What was I thinking? And then a few days later, I’m ready to sign up for the next one.
Kameron 13:27
The pain of that goes away. And a lot of the things that I do you know, I’ve developed that way from just having somebody asked for me to do something. I know how to do it but I don’t know you know those demons come into your mind
Madhav SBSS 13:48
self doubt and yeah, self sabotaging, like, Can I do this? Am I who am I to do this? I’m
Kameron 13:54
not capable. Am I good enough?
Madhav SBSS 13:56
How do you handle that kind of negative thought that comes you can control the thought but what do you do with it? Once you come across something
Kameron 14:05
like that? I just forget about it and do it. Don’t give
Madhav SBSS 14:07
it enough power? Yeah, give it power it become stronger if you don’t?
Kameron 14:11
Yeah, I just simply think I know how to do this. And I can set big stones and big hole, little stones into little holes. And if I want to bad enough,
Madhav SBSS 14:26
if you want to bad enough, you will do it. Yeah. That’s a beautiful way to say it. I think the roadblocks or hurdles like I think I forget the name. Someone said are not there to stop you but only to show you how badly you wanted. Right and you get over that hurdle and move on and feel really good about actually. How do you keep one of the things I struggled with and I think many creators struggle is discipline and consistency and being able to finish the work that you started off doing things consistently as opposed to doing them haphazardly once in a while. Live when you have a mod, how do you keep that up?
Kameron 15:02
Ah, well, you know, I’m like everybody else, there are some things that I’ll start. And for some odd reason, for whatever reason, there’s some kind of little block in my mind. And I’ve got rain sitting on my bench that, you know, I’ve been sitting there six months, and I come back to those rings and in in time where my mind is flowing freely, and my creativity is flowing freely. When the moon is ride, you know, the stars are properly aligned, and, and I pick those things up, and I go with them again. And if not, you know, the good thing about what I do is, everything I do is recycle, I can take my stone back out, I can re refine my goal, I can refine not silver. And so in a way, it’s no big loss to me, if I just don’t finish something, you know. And sometimes I’ll actually take one of those stones out and recycle my materials. And just for whatever reason to start it again. Maybe I had some kind of a hang up the first time, and my brain got a little bit scattered out. But just the, just just the process of restarting, and starting it on an on a on a good day, that hiccup doesn’t get me and it’ll go right through the second time. And there’s really no explanation for it, other than one day, I didn’t finish it. And the next thing I did, and I wouldn’t, I would tell people don’t be scared to if something is stopping you. From coming out with a positive experience. Don’t take that as a negative experience. Simply go back and start the process again. And, and maybe the phone rang, you know, in some point, the first time and distracted you and, and stopped you from doing what you’re doing. There’s 1000 things that can stop. You know what you’re doing, other than something’s wrong, or you aren’t capable, or, or, you know, it’s just the moon when right?
Madhav SBSS 17:58
There are external factors and those internal factors, self doubt, and things like that. And many of these can be changed. There’s nothing like Steve Jobs, for example, the Apple founder, says, we tend to come into this world and believe that everything in his world is as it is, and you need to accept it, which is wrong. He says you can poke it, and it’ll react. And that’s something that you can change. And if you think that way, then you you have the power to come back to it again. Yeah, that’s beautiful.
Kameron 18:27
Yeah. And that sector, and not only you can poke it, and it’ll react, but when you poke it, and it reacts, it doesn’t always react the same one. So I would, I would say just don’t ever give up, just go back and start again. Super.
Madhav SBSS 18:46
What’s What’s one thing that’s really exciting to you right now in your business and your journey, where you see you going to can you share a little bit about where you’re going, but artillery.com
Kameron 19:02
Yes, I am. My My work is technically is is really evolving, and several different ways right now. And you know, what I do mainly is, is actually hand forging materials and my shapes are becoming more refined and refined and rounded and more organic and more flowing. And I end up developing those things just just just constantly. You know, I’m one of those people that will get up at three o’clock in the morning and go and go to my go to my bench and start ordering a piece of metal and for no other reason. Then something’s telling me, you know, to round this piece of Battle more, and I just can’t wait till the morning to do it.
Madhav SBSS 20:05
Many people dream of those things where you can wait to get up in the morning and just start doing work. That’s such a great line right there. Because a lot of people struggle to get up from the bed. They’re not necessarily excited about the kind of work they’re doing. And here is Cameron waking up at three because he just can get started. Great. Yeah. Nice. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that line. Right now, we’re getting the last segment of this session where like, maybe throw out a few rapid fire questions, and see if we can answer something briefly about it. So one of one of the things I’d love to learn about is what you know, if your favorite book that you might recommend that sort of inspires you, or something that inspired you, when you were struggling in the beginning. It doesn’t have to be creative side, it’s a favorite book that maybe a story or maybe something that might look back up. But
Kameron 21:10
I just always, always look back to, I’ve got a set of books that and it’s not really related. But I’ve got a set of books that are every drawing that Leonardo da Vinci ever, ever did, you know, from his sketches to his paintings to him, you know, just every little note that he took. That’s, that’s now. And whenever, whenever I just thought I couldn’t do something, or was thinking how to go try to do this, that or the other, I always open those books, and just looked at what what a marvelous mind but the Leonardo da Vinci had, and what a great artist he was, and what a great engineer he was. And to think that really, this man had no body to teach him these things. This sprung out of his own creativity out of his own mind. And I think, book wise and lesson in life wise, whether it was Leonardo da Vinci, or relevant, or Phoenicians, or some little man of all sitting in a cave somewhere, you know, human creativity is, is there and you can release it. It’s something that we all possess if we just use what we have. Excellent.
Madhav SBSS 23:09
So that’s, that’s you actually touched on the second question, which is also maybe a favorite role model artists designer, I think Leonardo da Vinci is definitely something that inspired you, who inspired you in various ways where he had very few resources, right? Obviously, there was no Google. Like that he was able to achieve a lot with very little that he was able to access
Unknown Speaker 23:33
in terms of
Madhav SBSS 23:36
any digital tools or anything that online resources, anything that sort of you use on your daily basis?
Kameron 23:44
I do. I do look at Pinterest, some, you know, just to know what’s happening in the market, as far as new things as far as modern styles, and some of the incredible minds that are that are currently producing things. I mean, in a way we live in a after you a little a little bit of a renaissance because so many people are throwing their creativity out there being so well accepted. And they should be because their ideas are great. But although on my skin fiber or 10 minutes there, I try to limit it to that, right because if I don’t I fall into the trap of always sitting there looking at stuff for you know, two or three hours and then I’m distracted from from what
Unknown Speaker 24:47
I’m doing the work that you need
Kameron 24:49
to do. Yeah, and I think I won’t want to do something like this, but I need to add this listen minutes. But I’ll look at another picture and I’ll want to do Something like that. But I went ahead this, this and this and this and this. And by the end of the day, or the by the end of the session, I won’t remember any of it. So usually, I’m it’s been five or 10 minutes, they’re better off like, Oh, I like this shape of rain. But I need to add, you know, a bouquet of flowers on top of it. And that’s what we’re up for. I put it down and and I go off and let the audience settle in maybe scheduled as men continue to prepare. But I try to limit myself to that one. Pop. Oh, yeah. You know, I see that. But there’s something even more original than that. And that’s where extra are. I’m like the rest of the world and so distracted. Yeah, I don’t get any like,
Madhav SBSS 26:09
yeah. What was one thing that was holding you back for from doing or following the passion when doing this?
Kameron 26:22
I’m just never knew. And just never knew it had never occurred to me, it had never occurred to me to try. It wasn’t that I didn’t like our COVID it’s just that the thought had never crossed my mind to even start. And it wasn’t a great step away from some of the experiences that I’ve had in life. You know, I’ve been a metal fabricator welder. So working with metals was always part of my thing. But I just never even considered to make jewelry. And and when I when I was when I actually tried, I thought, wow, what, why wouldn’t I do? You know? What? Why didn’t I go, you know, be an apprentice under somebody, you know, as soon as I got out of high school. Yeah.
Madhav SBSS 27:29
And there’s a famous quote, I’m rephrasing it, but if we did all the things we could, with the abilities we have, we’ll be astonished ourselves. I guess we hardly ever explore or try it out and runs. We try it out.
Unknown Speaker 27:45
Oh, I didn’t I could do that.
Kameron 27:47
Beautiful. Yeah, it’s one of those. I didn’t I didn’t see the forest for the terrain. You know.
Madhav SBSS 27:56
One last question is a magic question. If you had a magic superpower to create anything you want to create
Kameron 28:07
if I had a magic superpower but if if I if I could do anything that I could make anything that I wanted to I would send myself back in time just for a day just to learn some of the techniques of the old Goldsmith’s you know, 4000 years ago, some of these folks were making finer pieces of jewelry than we can make today. And I would just, I didn’t want to go back in time just to know how they did.
Because they’re their masterpieces. Absolute masterpieces that the Moto moto would like to make them but you just learn by curiosity. But I think that’s
Madhav SBSS 29:27
excellent. Cameron, give our creative nation listeners a parting piece of advice and how we can connect with you online or offline. And we’ll say goodbye after that.
Kameron 29:45
You can always come by my website or jewelry.com on Facebook, on artisan jewelry,
Unknown Speaker 29:55
artisan jewelry. Yes.
Kameron 29:58
So you can follow me there. To me, what I would want to leave anybody with is, you know, if you want to do something, if there’s even the slightest glimmer in in your mind that that you want to try something by all means try don’t let you know meeting a toolkit don’t let I think I need to buy a tutorial online stop. You know, just try it and you might find that you have been missing out on the thing that you would have enjoyed in your life the most to and you don’t have anything to lose. You absolutely don’t have anything to lose to give something horrible and, and just try off the wall crazy idea. By all means, just just do it. Super,
Madhav SBSS 31:03
thank you so much. Thanks, Cameron for your time was amazing. And thanks everyone for listening and we’ll see you on the magical side.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai