About Us

About CapturingEssence

CapturingEssence began in 2008 with a simple question:

What would happen if you took the concept of chainmaille armor, made the rings much smaller, and turned it into jewelry?

My interest in chainmaille originally started after watching a friend make a full chainmaille shirt. I was fascinated by the idea that hundreds of individual rings could be connected together to create something completely different.

Eventually, curiosity took over.

I picked up some inexpensive rings from a craft store and started experimenting with smaller versions of chainmaille patterns. Those first pieces weren't intended for a business. I was simply making jewelry for myself and seeing what I could create.

The craft-store rings didn't last long. I quickly became frustrated with the poor-quality metal and how easily the rings bent or broke, so I went looking for something better. That search eventually led me to suppliers who specialized in manufacturing rings specifically for chainmaille. Better materials opened the door to better designs.

At first, I worked mostly in silver and brass. Then friends started asking where I had gotten my jewelry. When I told them, “I made it,” they began asking if I could make pieces for them too. And CapturingEssence began to grow.

Where the Name Came From

Interestingly, the name CapturingEssence existed before the jewelry business did.

At the time, I was interested in photography and fascinated by the old lore surrounding early photography—the idea that a photograph somehow captured a small piece of a person's soul or essence. That idea of capturing essence stuck with me. As my interests shifted from photography toward chainmaille, the meaning of the name shifted with them. Instead of capturing an image, I was capturing rings and combining creativity with mathematics.

Chainmaille might look purely artistic from the outside, but there is a surprising amount of math behind it. The relationship between the wire gauge and the inner diameter of a ring creates its aspect ratio, and that ratio determines which weaves and patterns will work with a particular ring size.

Some patterns need looser rings. Others require extremely precise proportions. Change the size slightly and a weave might become too tight to move, too loose to hold its shape, or simply impossible to assemble.

For me, that combination is part of what makes chainmaille so interesting. It is creativity built inside mathematical boundaries.

Learning Through Experimentation

When I began learning chainmaille, there weren't nearly as many tutorials, videos, and instructional resources available as there are today.

Most of the time, I learned by looking at photographs of finished pieces and experimenting with rings until I figured out how the pattern worked. Sometimes that meant trying the same connection repeatedly, pulling it apart, turning it around, and trying again. That process shaped the way I still approach chainmaille today: experiment, understand how the rings interact, and keep exploring what else they can become.

As people began requesting different colors, I slowly expanded beyond silver and brass. One color became several, several became more, and today we work with more than 20 colors and over 15 different chainmaille weaves and patterns.

Growing a Business Alongside a Family

CapturingEssence was also growing alongside our family.

In those early years, I was pregnant, a stay-at-home mom, and taking some of my first college courses. Making and selling chainmaille jewelry provided an additional stream of income while still allowing me to be home with my family.

The business also grew during the early days of Facebook, when small business pages were much more closely integrated into people's regular newsfeeds. Social media gave me a way to share new creations, experiment with color combinations, and connect directly with the people discovering my work.

In 2010, CapturingEssence began attending events.

What started as jewelry made at home gradually became weekends spent setting up booths, meeting customers, traveling to festivals, and becoming part of the Renaissance and Celtic festival communities.

Over the years, the business became increasingly family-run.

I taught my husband and children the same way I had learned: starting with the fundamentals. First came learning how to properly open and close a ring. Then came simple patterns. From there, we would figure out how each person's brain understood a weave and which pattern made the most sense for them to learn next.

One of the interesting things about chainmaille is that not everyone sees a pattern the same way. A weave that seems completely obvious to one person can look impossible to someone else until it is explained from a different angle. Teaching my family became its own exercise in understanding how different people recognize patterns and connections.

Today, I'm the mom of three teenagers, and CapturingEssence is truly a small family business. My husband and I make thousands of pieces by hand each year, with occasional help from the kids.

Still Experimenting

A lot has changed since those first craft-store rings in 2008.

Today our tables are filled with more than 20 colors, dozens of designs, and more than 15 different chainmaille weaves and patterns. We spend many weekends traveling to Renaissance fairs, Celtic festivals, and other events, meeting both new customers and people who come back to find us year after year.

But the things I enjoy most about chainmaille are still remarkably similar to what drew me to it in the beginning. I love playing with different weaves and patterns. I love experimenting with colors. I love making something tangible with my hands. I love meeting the people who eventually wear those pieces. And I love being part of the festival community that has become such a large part of our family's life.

CapturingEssence started with curiosity. Nearly two decades later, that curiosity is still there.

There is always another pattern to learn, another color combination to try, and another handful of rings waiting to become something new.