Creativity strikes manufacturing jeweller Vanessa Nock most often after the sun goes down. It is then, when the business of her business is done – when her cup has been filled with her support network and the many emails, calls and consultations have been attended to – that the creative genie is released.
A favourite playlist is started and off she goes: she picks up a colour-coded hammer – tools somehow elegant in dusky pinks and soft greys – or one of the many sets of pliers she has lined up in meticulous order. She lays out the metals and carefully places the stones she will use to conjure something beautiful, elegant and utterly unique.
Vanessa is in all ways an artist, and via her business Uniqueness Designer Jeweller, she expresses her art through jewellery.
“I can make things that I know will enhance people’s lives – keepsakes of a special event or a significant milestone – and what I create brings joy. How lucky am I?” she says. “My work is so often a legacy piece: that one piece a person might own, the one piece that they invest in.
“I make golden sculptures for people’s legacies. That’s powerful, right?”
Vanessa delivers a little of herself in each piece. She prides herself on listening to what a client envisages and channels her connection with them to help shape the piece she crafts.
“People view my pieces and I have had people say, ‘I would love that but it is too bold’, and I say ‘bold for whom? This is about you, a statement piece, and if you feel it, I can create a piece that is meant for you. Then all you have to do is embrace it’. There is nothing better for me to see the dawning, the realisation that this golden sculpture will always remind them of something significant and that they contributed to the expression of that.”
In person, Vanessa oozes confidence, is bold and direct. She is elegantly dressed with perfectly matched accessories and of course, her fine, manicured fingers are adorned with the most sublime rings of her own making.
Vanessa says she has never before felt so much that she is “nailing it” in her business and life, and a key to unlocking this new level of success has been to connect with others of like mind. Through the Sunshine Coast Business Women’s Network, she has found belonging.
“I attend every month for coffee catchups or breakfasts or lunch – I prioritise it – and the purpose is for connection. But we actually have a question each month to answer. And last time it was about pivotal moments. In considering my answer, I said ‘I followed my heart. I absolutely trusted my inner soul and my heart to go well’. And it has all led to here, which is very cool – to have found your soul’s purpose, my life’s purpose, is such a significant feeling.”
Vanessa is proud to have been a 2025 finalist in the SCBWN’s Micro Small Business Woman of the Year Award, revelling in the glow of affirmation from her peers and judges. While she occasionally draws on contractors to do valuations, pearl threading and stone setting, she is a one-woman show.
“My mum is my business mentor and has been since I started, but my world has expanded by connecting with other women who are in business when I started my own,” she says. “The Sunshine Coast Business Women’s Network is just what I needed to learn and to grow: I was immediately inspired. Seven years ago, I found my tribe there; I found life-long friends.”
Vanessa says that on reflection, her career path has had incremental, scaffolded steps. And although Vanessa has told the story of her career many times, she still gets a tear in her eye in the telling.
At school in Bundaberg, she surprised everyone, including herself, by excelling in metal and woodwork, but was uncertain of her post-school career path.
A tentative visit to a Hervey Bay college to scout out hairdressing courses resulted in Vanessa completing a visual arts course majoring in jewellery and securing an apprenticeship with a well-regarded Bundaberg jeweller Bill Proctor, where she stayed for seven years.
After moving to the Sunshine Coast, Vanessa worked for Underwood Jewellers at Sunshine Plaza for 13 years and McLean and Co Jewellers at Kawana for more than two years.
But she felt the need to stretch and grow, envisaging her own studio, and she launched Uniqueness Designer Jeweller in 2018. The first creation to come from her solo business was a $35,000 bikini, made in collaboration with The Veve Swimwear owner Vanessa Bryce to raise awareness about the importance of attending to mental health. It was certainly a conversation starter and instantly announced to the world that Uniqueness was open – and its creations were bold as well as beautiful.
A workshop and studio space were crafted to Vanessa’s specifications when she and her husband built their immaculate new home in 2023.
As well as featuring tools and devices to make her jewellery, it is her haven, her ideas incubator, her place of peace.
Woven into Vanessa’s business model is philanthropy and charity work. Her rose pink aura shares the beauty of her creations beyond her loyal client base and into the broader community.
With her dusky pink colour signature theme and timeless elegance, Vanessa is not your typical tradie. She says with a wink that she is a professional glitter maker and maker of tiny golden sculptures and beautiful adornments.
“There is so often emotion in the story that leads to people to come to me,” she says. “It might be that I am asked to integrate parts of a piece from a relative or loved one. The new piece will hold the past and be beautiful in the present, and while you might not be able to hug a certain person, you can hold that piece of jewellery, and that’s what gets me.
“It’s the stories of love or loss or hope or beauty my clients share that make me emotional.
“And I get to play a part in creating something beautiful for them.
“It is a bit cliché, but I really am living in my dream.”