About Me

"terrabella" means "beautiful land" and perfectly describes the setting in which I live. Our country has different natural resources in the different regions. We have volcanoes, fresh water lakes and lagoons, beaches in the Pacific Ocean and Carribean, mountains, and rivers. Each small picturesque town has its own traditions and foklore.

I am a third generation jeweler and my husband owns a carpentry shop that specializes in cabinetry. We moved from Florida to Nicaragua in 1995 on a 3 year adventure and now its 2010! My husband’s carpentry uses larger pieces of sustainable wood; therefore I found a way to use his tiny pieces of wood to tie them in with what I love to create. It is a byproduct and gives me the gratification of having found something useful and beautiful to do – one’s man’s garbage is another one’s treasure.....

I have always been fascinated by the different regions and the ingenuity of the people in each region and found ways to help sustain and support individual families.

The crocodile leather is bartered from a family that lives in the lake region where crocodiles are sustainably farmed and are used as their main source of meat. I give them bangles for their artisanal creations and they give me small amounts leather in return.

The baskets are elaborated in the northern region of the country where the lower temperature and higher altitude provides pine trees that do not exist in any other region. Since my grandmother is from this region and we are constantly travelling there, I always purchase whatever amount of baskets this one particular family has made and then I embellish them with natural seeds, metals, and fibers.

I hope that you will love these as much as I love creating them. No two will ever be identical.

terrabella is my window of oporunity to interact with the outside world.I love this country and the one in which I was raised, so it's like having the best of both worlds.