Airdrie Makim grew up in the Australian outback, a place that may sound thrillingly adventurous to us, but for her was a “long way from anywhere.”

With very few available shopping venues, Airdrie was left with no choice but to design and create things for herself. She credits her hometown for encouraging her creativity. “It also meant that environmental awareness was an integral part of life, not something to be learnt later.”

Airdrie still lives in Australia but she no longer calls the outback her home. “Melbourne's now my home; it’s a great city, very multicultural, fab cafes and lots of great creative people around.” And Melbourne is where Airdrie now creates her own jewelry designs, titled Joolz. This motto is written on the Joolz web site: “Every person is unique. So is every item at Joolz. Handmade jewellery using natural materials means items with individuality and style.”

With her own collection of award winning, hand made jewelry that is often created from recycled materials, it seems like this Australian designer is managing the independent design world quite well. “I love the buzz, the creativity, the people. I absolutely love working with a creative team of people.”

Airdrie finds creativity all around her, but since she uses a lot of recycled materials to create her pieces, which means a lot of unique, one-of-a-kind items, she often finds inspiration just from the materials themselves. “That engenders its own creativity. Sometimes it happens straight away, sometimes it doesn't. I find things and sometimes just leave them there for a while, I look at them, turn them around, and occasionally something just goes 'ping' in my brain and all of a sudden I can see what the final design will be.”

One of her biggest accomplishments this year was being listed by Nolcha NY as one of the world's top independent designers – something she regards as a huge honor.

Airdrie feels her biggest struggle as an independent designer is trying to explain her creative endeavors, and the struggles that come with them, to people who are outside of the industry. “It can be lonely to be a person with a vision that no one else sees. People don't realize what a huge amount of work goes into what you do - they only see the glamour and they don't realize what its like behind that - what it takes to do that.”

Whenever she's not designing, she loves traveling around the world, meeting new people and seeing new cities. “One of my most memorable trips was on the Tans-Siberian Railway, from Moscow to Beijing with my sister.”

She ended the interview with some great business advice for aspiring designers: “Get to know your target market really, really well.”

And it looks like that hard work is paying off for Airdrie: view her portfolio and blog at http://www.ustrendy.com/joolz/