Design is what compels jewellery artisan Véron-ique Williams - plus a restless, artistic nature that always wants to create something new.
Six years ago, after arriving on the Coast, she started making concrete garden decorations: bird baths, stepping stones and brightly adorned concrete balls. They were lovely but so heavy, she explained, that showing them at craft fairs was backbreaking. Although she still mixes her own concrete and continues to produce the garden features at her Roberts Creek studio, she moved into jewellery design, and this is how she is best known on the Coast.
At Atelier Véronique (atelier is French for artist's studio) she fashions necklaces and bracelets in a huge variety of styles - from delicate, classical looks using sterling silver and tiny stones to chunky, playful, colourful pieces made of polished wood, freshwater pearls, coral, silver, glass or semi-precious stones: tourmaline, garnet, agate, turquoise, jade or quartz.
Williams has studied the properties of stones, many of which are reputed to have healing or mood enhancing powers.
"I don't know much about it, but I know that when I work with tourmaline, I feel good," she said. "It's not even my style - I like bright colours, showing a necklace of the semi-precious stone in muted natural tones. Jewellery has so many possibilities."
She studied in France at an interior design school and the University of Fine Arts in Besançon. Her mother was a costume designer, and for a while Williams pursued that art. It morphed into woodworking and stage design, a job she loved and practised in Spain.
Two years ago she reconnected with wood and now makes driftwood wall and porch hangings. The shapely pieces of sea-smoothed wood come from local beaches and the hangings are accented by glass beads, floats, bits of woodland fungus and other interesting items found in nature.
But she is ever restless.
"I can't do nothing," she said. "The worst thing you can say to me is 'relax.'"
So, last winter she hunkered down in the basement of her home to design and make her own colourful glass beads. The hand-made beads show up in her jewellery dotted among stones or hanging with the driftwood.
"When it's nice outside I still make my concrete, and when it's raining, I sit inside and make tiny jewellery," she said.
One project that requires concentration are her signature rings and bracelets composed entirely of coloured Swarovski crystal. At least two days' work goes into each one and they are priced at the high end of her collection: $225 for an intricately worked and very glamorous bracelet.
"I haven't seen this anywhere else on the Coast. It's more of a European thing," she said.
Although most of the glass she uses is her own creation, some of the work uses an iridescent Japanese glass. It seems to capture the light in its creamy depths then radiate it back to the wearer. She doesn't know how this particular glass is made, but it's a good guess that it will become next year's project.
Her work can be found at Fresh from the Coast in Sechelt, Elements in Roberts Creek and the Woods store in Gibsons. In the summer she's often seen at the farmers' markets. But it's hard work getting the product out there.
"I don't like selling," the francophone explains, partly because she is still not comfortable with her communication. "Speaking English is a huge challenge."
She has neither website nor e-mail yet. But there is a tidy, wee studio which she built herself and where her work shows to advantage. Visitors can drop in if they see her working in the atelier, but with four kids around the house it's best to call ahead: 604-886-1248 (cell 604-740-7245).
