She Sits at her bench over a small piece of silver, the flickering light of a flame throwing shadows across her work space. The shelves are stacked with the tools of her trade - flat-nosed and round-nosed pliers, snips, scissors, hammers, tweezers, gold and silver links, polish mops, files, ring mandrills, scribes, dividers and punches.

"It's a tough, lonely road sitting at a bench," she says, holding a piece of jewellery steady on the fireblock. "You're very much on your own."

But, she adds: "I'm on my way. It's starting to happen now. It's three-and-a-half years since I started out on my own. I feel very self-satisfied, being my own boss."

Celine Traynor, a jewellery designer, loves working in metal. "I like the hardness of the metal, which restricts you in certain ways, unlike the softness of ceramics. It's hard to manipulate, it can't go either way by itself. The technical side of it is as important as the design side. The metal is unforgiving, it restricts you."

Growing up in Newry, she knew "from an early age that art was definitely what I liked doing. In grammar school, it was very much 2D then, painting and drawing, and very little 3D.

"My first chance of doing 3D was in foundation year in the University of Ulster, Jordanstown, outside Belfast. It was like a discovery."

She studied for a BA (Hons) degree in fine craft design. At that stage, she believes, the emphasis in the course "was very creative, which I never regret but", she adds, "in some ways we weren't trained for the real world".

She would have liked some intensive training in the technical and the business aspects in order to prepare her for a career in jewellery design.

Since graduating, she's "picked up" the major techniques of soldering, piercing, filing and finishing. "It's a very physical job - you need strength." As for work experience, "no jewellery shops in Belfast at the time were willing to take on jewellery designers. It was very difficult to get a job." There were no suitable postgraduate courses or design networks to feed into. There are some courses and support networks in place today, she says.

She got a job in Dublin working in Emma Stewart-Liberty's shop in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, starting in April 1989 and working there for three years. She learned the rudiments of jobs such as cleaning up castings, soldering and how to pierce correctly. But, she says, "I was bursting to do my own designs." Such was her frustration with the business, that she moved towards a career in music.

She continued during this time to work at night at her bench at home, doing one-off jobs and developing a number of new designs. In 1997 she took the leap and began work as a full-time jeweller.

In 1999 she was one of six designers in Ireland to be chosen to take part in "Gold", a Craft Council initiative for exhibiting, promoting, producing and retailing jewellery at home and abroad. Her most recent designs were awarded the best new product award from Showcase Ireland 2001. Today she goes to craft fairs, makes new contacts, handles the business, employs an assistant and when she can find the time develops her own designs. "You have to be so rigid and controlled. You have to put in physical work to get your name out there. Now I'm at that stage," she says.