Rising Stars: Meet Laura Novak-Roesgen of Coto de Caza

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Novak-Roesgen.

Hi Laura, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I never thought of myself as creative.

For most of my adult life, I was the practical one. The engineer. The problem-solver who kept things running while telling herself, “I’ll pursue my creative hobbies later.” Later kept getting postponed.

When my family’s business, Novak Electronics, of 38 years, closed, I felt the loss of more than a company. I lost my identity as someone who helped design and build things that mattered. I took an engineering position for stability, but something felt hollow.

Then my sister Linda was diagnosed with stage-four cancer. She was my best friend and one of the most supportive people in my life. During her illness, she’d send me jewelry inspiration, nudging me toward something I’d been ignoring for years. “Make something that feels like YOU,” she’d say. So I started creating, mostly as therapy. Something to do with my hands while my heart was processing so much grief and uncertainty.

What I didn’t expect was what happened next.

I’d sit at my bench, selecting stones with distinctive matrices, hammering textures into sterling silver, applying the same engineering precision I’d used for years. And slowly, something shifted. I wasn’t just making jewelry. I was designing my way back to myself.

The real revelation came at art festivals, when customers would look at my work and say, “You’re so creative.” I was stunned! Me? The engineer? But then a woman picked up a Turquoise Pendant Necklace and said, “I can see you make your jewelry with intention.” And in that moment I realized: these women weren’t just admiring the jewelry. They were seeing themselves in my story, thinking, “If she can reclaim her creativity at 60, maybe I can too.”

That’s when Novaura became something bigger than a jewelry brand. It became a mirror. For women ready to reclaim the passions they’d quietly put on hold.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The biggest obstacle was the voice in my own head.

When I started Novaura Jewelry, I had nearly four decades of business experience behind me. I knew how to build something, manage operations, serve customers, and lead a team. What I didn’t have, in my own mind, was permission to call myself an artist.

I was the engineer. The practical one. And somewhere along the way I believed that creativity was a trait you either had or you didn’t. I couldn’t draw, so I didn’t feel artistic. Even as I was making jewelry that people admired, I kept waiting for someone to figure out that I didn’t belong.

I thought I had more confidence in myself than that. I genuinely believed I wouldn’t need external validation to claim the title of artist. Apparently, I did.

The shift came in two moments:

The first was being accepted as a juried artist at Laguna Art-A-Fair. If you know anything about a major art festival, you know the jury doesn’t hand out spots as a courtesy. Being accepted told me something I hadn’t been able to tell myself: yes, this is real. Yes, you belong here.

The second was becoming a Halstead Grant finalist in my first year. The Halstead Grant is a respected recognition in the independent jewelry world. Being named a finalist didn’t just validate the work. It reframed my story. Thirty-plus years of building a family business hadn’t been a detour from my real life. It had been training for this one.

External recognition only solves one kind of doubt. The other kind lives in the day-to-day work of actually building a business.

The other obstacle, and I’ll be vulnerable about this because I think it helps other makers hear it, was discovering that beautiful work doesn’t sell itself. I opened an Etsy shop and assumed the orders would follow. It was not exactly an “if you build it, they will come” moment. Learning to tell my story publicly, to show up consistently online, to understand that marketing is just another form of craft: that was a humbling education.

I’m still in it. But I’ve stopped waiting to feel ready.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I create gemstone jewelry with a modern coastal ease for women like me. Women reinventing themselves after career transitions and discovering creative souls they didn’t know they had. Every piece is designed and made in my Southern California studio. I select each gemstone for its distinctive beauty and natural character that cannot be found in mass-produced jewelry. No two pieces are identical, because no two stones are alike.

I blend engineering precision with an artistic soul to create jewelry for women whose style is authentically hers, not borrowed. Each piece is designed to move with her life, equally at home in a boardroom, at a weekend market, or at a dinner table by the ocean.

My aesthetic draws from two things I know deeply: the discipline of engineering and the ease of the California coast. The result is jewelry with clean lines and timeless sensibility, built around the colors of the sea and shore. Sterling silver forms the foundation, warmed by copper accents and given texture through hand-hammering. Integrated beading adds dimension alongside the gemstones, creating pieces that feel both refined and alive.

I specialize in turquoise above all else. I’m drawn to its range, from deep ocean to pale sky blue, and to the way a well-chosen stone with a strong matrix tells its own story before you even put it on. I source from trusted US-based suppliers who share my commitment to genuine, natural stones, because the woman wearing my work deserves to know exactly what she’s wearing.

What am I most proud of? It’s the moment a customer says, “This feels like me.” Not “it’s beautiful,” though I love hearing that too. That instant recognition, that feeling of a piece clicking into place like it was already hers, that’s what I make jewelry for.

I was accepted as a juried artist at Laguna Art-A-Fair and named a Halstead Grant finalist in my first year. But the validation I return to most is simpler: the woman who comes back later and says she hasn’t taken a piece off since she bought it. That’s the standard I hold myself to.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What I Love About Living in Coto de Caza, CA.
My husband Dick and I moved to Coto de Caza in 1995 with our one-year-old daughter Rachel. We’d fallen in love with the community before we lived here. We were living in neighboring Trabuco Canyon at the time, and Dick and I would ride our bikes through Coto de Caza on weekends, drawn to its beauty and the sense of calm that settled over you the moment you passed through the gates. Thirty-one years later, we are still in the same home, and I still feel that same sense of serenity.

We raised all three of our children here. Jessica was born in 1996, Robby in 2000, and this community was the backdrop for all of it. The running trails, the view of the foothills, the trees, the quiet. As a runner, I especially love the dirt trails that wind through the community. There is something about moving through that landscape that clears my head and inspires my work.

Coto de Caza is peaceful and surrounded by nature, and that landscape is woven into who I am as a jewelry artist. My aesthetic is rooted in coastal California ease. The colors and serenity of this landscape show up in everything I make. The ocean itself is never far from my mind. My favorite place to run is the bluffs at Crystal Cove, and the beaches there are where I take sunset walks that remind me why I design the way I do. It feels fitting that Novaura jewelry is sold at the Crystal Cove Gift Shops. That stretch of coastline is genuinely part of my creative foundation.

Laguna Beach, where I show my work each summer at the Laguna Art-A-Fair, is another place that feels like home. The art community there, the light, the way creativity is woven into the culture of that town, reflects the kind of artist I continue to aspire to be.

What I Like Least
Southern California traffic! Anyone who lives here will understand. The traffic on the 5 freeway on the weekends is brutal. Now that we have a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Mackenzie, we make that drive often. I babysit her on Fridays, and every mile is worth it. But I won’t pretend the 5 freeway is my favorite place to be.

The summers and falls here run hot. I love the serenity of where we live, but I dream of a coastal home with an ocean view. The ideal version of my future self is sitting at a studio bench with a window facing the Pacific. I haven’t given up on that dream.

Pricing:

• Necklaces: $78 to $318
• Earrings: $32 to $168
• Bracelets: $28 to $148
• Rings: $24 to $188

Contact Info:

• Website: https://novaurjewelry.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/novaurajewelry
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/NovauraJewelry
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lauraroesgen/

Image Credits
Amanda Anglen of Still Shots LLC