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For those of us alive in 2020, it will forever be the year that life as we knew it would change. The whole world was drawn into the Coronavirus pandemic. Everyone has a different experience of how this worldwide trauma affected them.
I was fortunate in that me and my family were able to pivot our lives to be home pretty much all day every day. I even kept a photo journal on social media of the first 100 days staying home. It was my own oddball way of staying connected with family and friends.
As our "new normal" was really starting to set in, I was starting to feel the pull to get out of my desk chair (I ran a digital marketing company: Chill Digital Marketing) and be creative with my hands. Because I was apparently on social media more (with those daily check-ins), I was seeing a lot of ads for tools/supplies to make hand stamped jewelry and keepsakes.
This spawned me to get a beginner kit with Impress Art. I wanted to stamp inspirational words on pieces of jewelry to send to friends and family to put a smile on their faces during these uncertain times we found ourselves in.
I was eager to get started and was pretty much a rookie at it, so that lead to me doing a lot of YouTube searches on how to make hand stamped jewelry (of course Impress Art also has a ton of tutorial videos too!).
If you have ever fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole, then you have a pretty good idea of what happened next. I started watching videos on how to make other types of jewelry. The ones that involved wire wrapping piqued my interest as something I could learn easily.
While I continued to make pieces here and there with the stamping, I started to dabble in wire wrapped jewelry. It started with making some rings.
Then bracelets and necklaces soon followed behind.
As I was gifting pieces to friends and family over several months, I kept hearing "You should sell this stuff!" I really didn't feel like I had the skill set to actually sell what I was making, but the seed was definitely planted.
I don't know about you, but I certainly fall victim to the Shiny Object Syndrome. I wanted to make sure this wasn't just some hobby that I would walk away from in a few months. I made an agreement with myself, if I was still just as excited to be in the creative zone making jewelry after 6 months, then I would consider taking it to the next level.
Well, those 6 months flew by and I kept finding myself wandering away from my marketing desk to my workshop desk. Watching more and more how-to videos and buying online courses to learn even more was becoming a normal day to me.
Then one day I woke up and realized I was starting to feel burdened by all the podcasts and content and client work I was doing in my marketing business that it may be time to consider making a switch. And a switch is exactly what I flipped!
I sat down and really thought about life and this past year+ with the global pandemic and decided life was too short. And I needed to do something that brought joy to me each day....not dread.
I got into the nitty gritty of laying out what a jewelry making business would look like. How I wanted to be in this business. What I wanted to do with this business. And this past spring I started closing down my marketing business (although I still take consulting clients here and there...I don't think I'll ever completely walk away from it), and started designing and making more and more pieces. And as they say...the rest is history.
~Dianna
comment (1)
I love this story, and so admire your passion to pursue what lights you up! Thanks for all of the light you bring to this (sometimes dreary) world.