My story
My name is
Anastasiia Gorbunova.
I am a photographer, needlewoman, mother, and founder of
AnaLesnaya.
I grew up in Snezhinsk, a small Ural town in Russia. Mountains, endless coniferous forests and ferns, and in the lakes - rock crystal... I spent a lot of time in the forest, finding its company and magic cleaner and safer than in crowded places. As a child, I was fond of needlework. In addition to studying at school, I devoted 11 years of my childhood to theater and singing. And then I started looking for my profession. I tried my hand at 3 institutes in teaching and design specialties, But all this was not what my soul asked for.
Then I remembered that as a child I loved to collect flowers and mastered the profession of a florist.
Then I decided to follow my childhood hobbies and started knitting to order and accidentally ordered accessories for making earrings... I had no idea that this accident was the path to my true profession...That's how I started making jewelry. I am fascinated by stones and metal.
A year later, photography courses were added to my classes. And I started inviting girls to photo shoots with jewelry.
Now I'm learning new jewelry making techniques and studying marketing.
Jeweler's Way
I was looking for my own style and color scheme. At first, I used the simplest accessories from Aliexpress.
I learned how to photograph jewelry and sold these jewelry for 1-8 euros. But later I saw that jewelry made from cheap fittings is oxidized and cannot be restored.
When I saw this, I immediately stopped selling jewelry and started looking for a high-quality replacement for accessories.
I bought very high-quality fittings from California. It was silver plated and gold plated. Jewelry could now be cleaned in the same way as regular jewelry made of precious metals.
But I was missing something in the jewelry. I needed more freedom. I wanted to create something unique myself, and not buy ready-made pendants, attach stones to them and sell them as something amazing and unique. It's too easy. In my opinion, such jewelry cannot be expensive and cannot be considered a work of art, since everyone can make them, it's like stringing beads on a string - voila, the beads are ready!
That's why I started studying jewelry on my own.
I wasn't ready to deal with the bureaucracy to get the right to work with silver (it's my favorite metal), so I settled on copper.
I learned the art of creating jewelry using electroplating, soldering and forging.
I am currently engaged in jewelry making and plan to create a book and record workshops. In the meantime, I'm filming the jewelry making process. And I run an educational channel on Telegram. Subscribe, it's magical for me✨
