Interview with a Star, Svetlana from nesluxury

Please, welcome Svetlana who runs Nesluxury shop on Etsy. Today, she is sharing her inspirational story with us.



Please tell us a little bit about yourself
My name is Svetlana, I was born in Kazakhstan and moved to Siberia after high school. I moved to Israel after graduation. Now I live in Haifa in Northern Israel and work at the Haifa University. My day-to-day work involves lots of numbers, statistics, programming and different really boring scientific related things. After that, all I really want to do (except spending time with my baby son Tom) is to create, create, create.


How long have you been creating? How did your journey in art and creativity begin?
As far as I can remember, I loved to create by hand. I draw, cut, glued, sculpted and built. I used paper, clay, metal wires, cones, sticks and stones from my father’s work room and the yard or the forest. When I grew up, I learned how to sew, knit and weave from my mom and grannies. My mother told that me that I was 12 month old when I took a pencil for the very first time… but she does not say, what I drew! When I was a teenager I studied in an art school for 5 years before moving to more “earthly” matters.


What is the best reaction you have gotten from one of your pieces?
Once it was a five-o'clock tea party at my friend's place in the Technion campus. A few young women gathered to chat and to look at my first flower creations. I made a jewelry set with large peachy pink flowers and some mint green seed beads among them. When I took it out of the box, three girls wanted to buy it immediately and they began to argue. At the end, the girl who had cash, got the set and I got two custom orders.


Do you take custom orders?
I love to do custom orders. This way I know in advance that this will be an item the customer will love and cherish. My favorite customer is a woman, who works with me in my institute and who I see every day. She orders something from me every season when she buys new clothes. I really like to see that she wears my jewelry with pleasure. Recently I was really honored to see a few of our friends wearing my items to one of our mutual friend's wedding. I made this jewelry especially for them!


What items in your shop do you enjoy making most and why?
It is definitely small roses because I really like the feel of the thin layers of polymer clay between my fingers. I see their birth petal by petal and it soothes me.


What are your main sources of inspiration?
I really don't know. It just comes to me! Sometimes I see a dully dressed girl and I am getting ideas how to improve her appearance. Sometime I find interesting and inspiring stuff on the Internet or I look at my materials (polymer clay, beads, silk or metal findings) and just begin to create.


Do you have a Favorite quote you'd like to share with us?
"You never know when you'll luck out." It is the very first phrase in the "The stranger" by Max Frei and I totally agree with him!