I have always had a love of beads and a desire to make jewelry for as long as I can remember. But single parenthood and a demanding job that entailed nights and weekends made it difficult to find that energy space to be creative until I had a major life change in 1998. I decided to move to Ireland with my then 9 year old son. Sounds a bit extreme but I believe the universe moved me in that direction once I put out an intention that I wanted to have a more authentic life . I wanted the time and space to be a mother to my son instead of trying to fit him into my busy career, to get back to a simple lifestyle so I didn’t have to work so much to keep what we had, to have breathing room to be more creative . . . to get to a place of being instead of doing all the time. Although it was emotional and at moments difficult to leave a life to begin a new one, the move itself was actually easy as I had a small circle of friends and lots of family there already and I had Irish citizenship through my grandmother.

So there I was in the fall of 1998 and, after 5-6 weeks of settling in, I decided to try my hand at making beaded jewelry and selling it at the local Country Market. I named my jewelry Kily as it’s the first 2 letters of my son’s name (Kiel) and the first 2 letters of my name (Lynne). My son was very helpful in giving me thumbs up or down on pieces that I made (mostly thumbs up!) I began selling in local shops and craft fairs; it was a happy time and I was gratified to be in this creative space.

Circumstances led us to move back to California after a year and half and I went back to my original career that I had left in 1998. I never completely stopped making my jewelry and had always hoped to complete this web site and keep this creative side nourished. It has taken four years but here it is. I hope you enjoy looking through my site as much as I have loved establishing it. Although my son doesn’t give me a thumbs up anymore on my pieces (he’s graduating from high school this spring), my husband Dave has been the rock of support and has put numerous hours of his time in photographing my pieces and helping me on the technical end that had slowed me down so many times before.

Thank you for visiting!