Joan German and Just Gini Jewellery – a match made in heaven

Sometimes a piece of art just speaks to you. It’s a rare and special connection when an artist is able to capture the spirit of the intended owner in her work, and that is indeed the case with artist Gini Foley of Just Gini Jewellery and now-collector Joan German.

Joan lives in British Columbia, Canada. You’ll spot her around town sporting black ensembles with funky vests and jackets, but her style is defined by what Joan deems her passion: her original custom-made watches by Just Gini Jewellery.

Joan’s most recent addition to her collection is a Funky Gini Watch:

The Funky Gini Watch by Gini Foley is the latest edition to Joan's collection; she has fallen in love with these watches, they bring her a smile every time she puts one on. Customize your own Just Gini watch on CustomMade.com!

All of Gini’s “Funky Gini” watches are custom designed  with unusual faces and big colorful beads. Joan’s new custom Funky Gini watch features a yellow and orange blow-fish, a cow hanging from the moon and an angel holding a sign that reads “LOVE”. The lampwork glass beads are put together in what Gini calls “…a hodge-podge kind of way, but artfully so”.

Here's a view of the Funky Gini Watch clasp, available on CustomMade.com

Gini warns all her customers that her “Funky” collection draws a lot of attention to the wearer – and Joan confirms that whenever she’s out and about, people stop her to admire her unique, bright timepieces.

This special customer-artist connection goes back for quite some time now. Custom jewelry maker Gini Foley, a retired stage director, choreographer and dance teacher known to her students as “The Sequin Queen,” at one time taught performing arts in the same school as Joan. Years later, Gini coaxed Joan to take a beading class with her, for fun.  So off they went, and were the only women in the class: “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” Joan joked with the beading teacher. Joan stated that she did not have a creative bone in her body, but of Gini she says, “Boy, is she creative!”

For Gini, that first beading class led her to channel her penchant for stage design into designing her own jewellery collection, which began with showings and open houses in her friends’ homes. Today, her work is featured in eighteen galleries across the island of Vancouver, the mainland of British Columbia and the state of Washington.

Gini loves creating funky and unusual watches with playful themes for her customers.  She fills custom requests for specific themes in a bracelet watch, earrings or a new bracelet strap for an old, treasured watch. Her pieces are unique in their daring use of colourful beads and mixed media to create playful patterns, with glass lampwork, wood, acrylics, bone, nuts and metals.

“I love to see customers smile and show-off their new, unique purchases,” says Gini.  “If they are happy, I am too.” Joan is certainly excited about her new Funky Gini watch, and we here at CustomMade are happy to see such a match made in heaven between an artist and a custom shopper!