The Mend Story
You are someone who seeks meaning, beauty, and connection in the things you choose. You care about craft. You value honesty. You are drawn to objects that carry weight and story—pieces that feel woven into a life rather than simply worn.
I’m Kelly, the metalsmith behind Mend Metalworks.
When I look back over my life, I can see that jewelry was a gift given to me early; not as a career, but as a language. As a child, I made friendship bracelets and small pieces to give to people I loved for birthdays and holidays. I didn’t know then why my hands were always reaching for wire, beads, and tools. I only knew that making something by hand felt like care, like connection, like presence.
Years later, before I was sober, jewelry entered my life again, but this time in the form of metalsmithing.
And everything changed.
What had been planted early returned when I needed it most. The studio became a refuge long before I understood it as one. I thought I was learning a craft; in truth, I was being prepared for a reckoning.
It was in the studio, working with fire and metal, that I reached a place of honesty with myself. Alone with heat, repetition, and patience, I came to understand that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. The work at the bench and the work within were never separate. Metalsmithing didn’t arrive after recovery; it was the place where recovery began.
I don’t believe that was an accident.
I believe the love of jewelry that was instilled in me as a child made it possible for me to receive the gift of metalsmithing when I needed it most. When I look back now, I can see how nothing was wasted and how something divine had been quietly at work all along, threading meaning through my life, preparing me to recognize truth when it finally arrived.
The studio became the place where I learned how to stay. It's also where I developed the courage to leave an entire life behind that was no longer serving my highest Self.
Recovery, like metalsmithing, is not about perfection. It’s about honesty. It’s about patience, humility, and learning how to work with fire without trying to control it. Transformation happens slowly, sometimes painfully, often quietly.
When I later decided to leave teaching and build this business full-time, someone said, “It’s amazing that you’re reinventing yourself.” But it didn’t feel like reinvention. It felt like a return.
I began writing words connected to returning, restoring, and recovering. When I wrote the word mend, it stopped me completely. It felt full. Clear. True.
Mend is not about fixing what is broken.
It is about tending what has been lived.
It is about resilience, repair, and the ongoing act of becoming.
I am a mostly self-taught metalsmith, fabricating each piece by hand using traditional techniques such as sawing, soldering, shaping, and texturing. My work is shaped by the mountains and high desert of Colorado and by my love of old-stock, American-mined stones; materials that already carry their own history.
I work slowly and intentionally. Everything begins with listening to the stone and the metal rather than forcing them. Jewelry, to me, should feel grounded. It should age well. It should live alongside you, and my mission is in part, to inspire awe and wonder in you via this work.
At its core, Mend is about resilience and return. It is the belief that nothing is wasted, that we are always becoming, always mending, always finding our way back to who we were meant to be.
If my work can accompany you through a season of change, reckoning, or remembering, I am deeply honored.