My story

Hello, I’m Toni-Maree

I am an Australian jeweller, artist, educator and writer based in Brisbane, Queensland.

My creative life has taken many forms, from jewellery and visual art to writing, teaching and, more recently, therapeutic arts practice. What connects them is a curiosity about making: why we create, what happens to us while we are making, and the meaning we find in the things we make and keep.

This website brings those different parts of my creative practice together.

Through my jewellery making, The Jewellery Makers Vault and Creative Hands Press, I create objects, resources and books intended to be worn, used, returned to and lived with.

Always curious

I have always been curious. I love learning how things work, why we do what we do, how ideas connect and what might happen if we look at something from a different direction.

That curiosity has taken me through studies in psychology, fine art and jewellery, writing and publishing, media, education, technology and business. Seemingly very different fields, but to me they have always belonged together. Each has given me another way to explore creativity, understand people, communicate ideas and help others learn.

I have always loved making things easier to understand. I seem to naturally look for the thread that connects scattered or complicated information, then find a way to make it clearer and more approachable.

I can see that thread everywhere in my work now. It is in the way I make jewellery, the resources I create for The Jewellery Makers Vault and the way I write and publish through Creative Hands Press. It is also leading me into my current postgraduate studies in therapeutic arts practice, where creativity, making and our ways of understanding ourselves come together in yet another way.

Looking back, my diverse education feels like one long, curious exploration of creativity, people, learning and making meaning.

Finding my way to the bench

Jewellery was not something I planned.

I began studying a Bachelor of Fine Art with a focus on sculpture, but something did not quite fit. One day, I paused outside the jewellery studio and watched students at their benches, shaping small pieces of metal into what looked like tiny sculptures.

I was curious.

I enrolled in an introductory course, sat down with a jeweller's saw in my hand, and knew almost immediately that I had found where I belonged.

What captivated me was the transformation. A flat sheet of silver becoming form. A simple length of wire becoming structure and story. Metal fabrication still feels like quiet alchemy to me.

Jewellery gave me a way to bring together many of the things I had always been drawn to: art, design, problem-solving, working with my hands and creating objects that can carry meaning beyond themselves.

A creative practice that kept growing

Over time, my work at the bench began to lead me in other directions.

Like many makers, I found myself constantly looking for information, developing systems, making calculations, keeping notes and creating tools to support my own studio practice.

Those practical needs eventually became The Jewellery Makers Vault, a growing collection of resources designed to make some of the everyday work of jewellery making a little easier.

Writing had always been another important part of my life, and gradually it began to find its way back into my creative practice too.

Creative Hands Press grew from that intersection of writing and making: an independent publishing imprint for thoughtful books and resources exploring creativity, making and the lived experience of creative practice.

What began at the jewellery bench had expanded into something much broader: an ongoing exploration of what it means to make.

Making with meaning

The thread running through all of my work is meaning.

I am interested in the relationship we develop with the things we make and the things we choose to keep. A piece of jewellery can hold a memory. A well-designed resource can make someone's time at the bench a little easier. A book can give a maker language for something they have felt but perhaps never quite articulated.

I believe making genuinely matters. It gives us ways to think, notice, experiment, remember, connect and sometimes understand ourselves a little differently.

That belief continues to shape my jewellery, my writing and the resources I create.

Still learning, still making

My own creative practice continues to evolve.

Alongside my jewellery and writing, I am currently studying therapeutic arts practice, exploring more deeply the relationship between creativity, embodied experience and wellbeing.

It feels less like a departure from what I have been doing and more like another part of the same continuing enquiry: what happens when we make, and why does making matter?

There are still metals I want to explore, books I want to write, resources I want to create and things I haven't imagined yet. For me, that is part of the pleasure of a creative life. It isn't a finished destination. It keeps unfolding.

Thank you for being here and for sharing a small part of it with me.

P.S. If you're curious about the studies and experiences that have shaped my path, you're very welcome to find me on LinkedIn →