I’m making and selling jewelry (again)! Jennifer Garry Designs is slowly but surely filling up with lots of super simple, hand-stamped pieces that whisper positive, empowering, sometimes sassy messages in your ear (or from your chest) to remind you of what’s really important.
I’ve loved making jewelry since I started dabbling in it before Ellie was born. There’s something about it that I find so calming. I’ve opened two different Etsy shops and made jewelry for a few weddings and sold pieces to people all over the world—but each time, I lost momentum and let the whole thing slip away.
I think part of my problem was that I had no real focus. I was making a lot of one-off pieces that were pretty but couldn’t really be replicated (whether it was because I was using reclaimed supplies or didn’t have a reliable place to get them from). I was more or less walking into Michaels, finding beads I thought were pretty, and making whatever came to mind once I got a chance to sit down and play with them. While fun, that’s a hobby—not a sustainable business model.
This time around, everything is different. The idea to do hand-stamped pieces came to me months ago and I let it swirl around in my brain a little before I decided to act on it and order myself a metal stamping kit. Then, after ruining a bunch of metal blanks trying to figure out how in the hell anyone does this, I finally started to get the hang of it.