INSIDE

At the start, she says she was encouraged by her husband to try jewelry-making as a new career path, not knowing they’d be divorced a year later.

A beading class at Mamaroneck High School got Older on the way.

“It just started exploding. All my roots, all the experience started coming back.”

She was making pieces all the time and once took something in to show to a boutique in Manhattan. The owner bought it on the spot, leading Older to believe “This is something.”

From the start, she felt her work stood out.

“I thought I had something a little bit different,” she says.

And it has caught on.

Older has drawn on her business background to expand her company’s reach. She sells online (pamolderdesigns.com) and exhibits at trade shows, street fairs, arts festivals and charity events. Shops that carry her collection range from Dovecote in Westport to E.B. Barrett Inc. in Larchmont, from Glass Onion Originals in Pleasantville to Fred in Old Greenwich.

Older’s work is also carried in national catalogs such as Arhaus Jewels. She’s especially pleased with a nearly three-year association with the Sundance catalog. Since 1989, founder Robert Redford has helmed the company that showcases the creations of artists across America.

“I’m really proud of that,” she says.

Older launched her company using high school students as her first assistants. Today, assistants allow her to focus more on design.

“It’s really about blending colors. It’s the stones I have on hand – and I have millions. It’s just coming up with new colors.”

And those designs are constantly coming.

“That’s my problem… I go to bed thinking about it.”

Older is inspired by the exotic locales – and the stones themselves – that she comes across on travels to Thailand, India, Nepal and Morocco.

Carved tourmalines found on her last trip to India, for example, led to another new design, as did a series of photographs she shot on that journey.

“I don’t limit myself at all. Whatever I like I make.”

Customers, she says, respond.

“Something that’s handmade, there’s some intrinsic value to it.”

Lately, she’s been captivated by the glittering crystal bits found in the various colors of druzy quartz.

And even with the addition of new elements, Older says, “somehow it comes out looking like my stuff.”

Stone by stone, she’s found a way to make her passion part of her daily life.

“I do it because I love it, and I can’t think of anything else right now I’d want to do.”