So, I started a blog.
What am I thinking? I have never done this before. Who is actually going to follow me? Why am I even doing this?? I guess you could say, I am doing this for me. So if you don't like it, don't read it. If you do like it, by all means, keep reading!
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| My family and I on our favorite beach in Avon, NC. |
I guess I'll give you the run down of who I am. My name is Susan. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a full time employee, and I love making pretty sparkly stuff in my free time!
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| This is my favorite creation with Vivid|Glitter so far. I dubbed it "Galaxy Glass Necklace" because I feel like I am looking into outer space when I look into the hand blown glass pendant. |
Where it all began,
circa 2001
I started working for my uncle in 2001, he owned a fine jewelry store, Earth's Corner Jewelers, which he and his wife founded in 1977. I remember going in to his store when I was a little girl and looking at all of the jewelry and feeling like I was in a little section of heaven. When he offered me a job, I was so excited. But in our family, we don't show much emotion. So I accepted his offer, and did a happy dance in the privacy of my own room.
All my other friends already had jobs. But, I totally felt like mine was the coolest. How awesome was it to work in a jewelry store around beautiful things all day? It was pretty awesome. It was also hard work. What you don't believe me? It's ok, I wouldn't believe me either.
Now, I say it was hard work, but that was at first. Once I caught on to all the names of the precious gemstones that mostly everyone knows already. My manager Joe, who by the way is AWESOME, he turned out to be my mentor...I'll get to that, said "Ok, now I want you to sell your first diamond engagement ring, without me, I'll be right here, if you get stuck just give me a shout." The previous week he worked with me on the three C's, but I still wasn't confident enough to SELL. But, I did great. I sold my first diamond engagement ring, all by myself, only looking back at Joe when they asked how long it would be to get it sized. I was shocked with myself. My "confidence" was my knowledge and from that moment on, I wanted to know everything about every stone, every metal. Joe lent me a book with all kinds of gems and minerals in it. I studied it harder than I studied my school books. I was determined to speak "jewelry" fluently.
Fast forward two years, and Joe decided it was time to learn how to string pearls. This made me really nervous. I would be making jewelry that people would be spending hundreds of dollars for, or already spent hundreds of dollars on. At Earth's Corner Jewelers, we had a workshop where the jeweler, my cousin and my uncle, fixed and designed jewelry. Two employees up front that knew how to string and knot bead jewelry, and I would be the third employee that would be relied on to get bead repairs done and bead stock out on the floor. Of course I didn't let my fear shine through. He told me he would start the necklace and I would finish it. I said "no problem." That's where my love for beading began. This is where Joe really became my mentor. He showed support for my creativity and started giving me free reign of the "Bead Cabinet" to start making my own creations. Many that sold in the store and made my confidence grow. The other employee that helped with beading, Karen, and I had a lot of fun with the creative freedoms we were given.
Joe and Karen are important factors of my life. Through my teenage years, my young adult years, my family, and yes, my engagement. They became part of my family, well because, working at a family owned business brings all sorts of drama and love that even if you weren't part of "the" family, you endured. Down to the joyous, fun, and even the saddest moments.
The rise and fall of my Earth's Corner Jewelers career
Part time, full time, part time, part-part time..
I'll just say this right now, I LOVED working at Earth's Corner Jewelers. It coincided with my favorite years, the teenage through young adult years. I started working at Earth's Corner part time in 2001, three hours a night and 8 hours on Saturdays. I worked part time through high school. I graduated in 2003 and started working full time at the jewelry store. In 2005, I started working part time at a cyber charter school. Yes, I will explain what a "Cyber Charter School" is. They offered me a full time position that I couldn't resist. So again, I started working part time at the jewelry store. It pained me, I went from in the running for 2nd Place top sales, back into the part-timer run between 3-4 other women. I was working 12 hours a day through the week, and 8-14 hours during the weekend. Needless to say my relationship with my boyfriend felt the effects. I was never around and when I was I was exhausted. If you've ever worked retail, you know that feeling sometimes when you just can't stand to smile or be nice after the work day is over? Yeah, that's what my boyfriend had to endure from me every day of the damn week. We ended up splitting up for a little while. This wasn't the only reason we broke up, we had trust issues, communication issues, and many other "issues" we had to work through. Which eventually we did, because in the fall of 2006, we fell madly in love all over again and started our relationship and lives together over again. We moved to a town 30 minutes away from our home town, and the jewelry store. We were going to fix our lives and relationship. I cut down my hours at the store even more, for the sake of our relationship. This schedule cut included no more making and re-stringing jewelry because I just wasn't there enough.
I started to dabble in making my own jewelry. I missed making jewelry at the store, I loved doing it and remember, I was good at it. I brought my pieces to my full time job, they sold, I made more, they sold. So I was comfortable with my "new hobby."
First Comes Love, then comes Marriage..
...then comes the baby in the baby carriage, baby seat, crib, the boppy, the bouncer, the bumbo, the changing table, the portable crib...the list could go on and on and on, but you get the point. My husband and I got married in March of 2008. Our son was born that September. This limited my time at Earth's Corner Jewelers even more. I stopped working the reduced hour schedule and started an "as needed" schedule. Mostly covering vacations or some extra holiday hours during Christmas.
The end of Earth's Corner Jewelers
My uncle was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in March of 2008. For people who do not have much knowledge of this form of cancer, it is one of most deadly forms. The mortality rate for Pancreatic Cancer is very high. My family and my Earth's Corner Family were devastated when we found out. Still, the stubborn man that my uncle was, survived longer than he was originally expected by the doctors, and was generally strong up until the very end. My uncle passed away in August of 2010. Consequently, my Aunt sold the jewelry store and it's contents. That was the end of Earth's Corner Jewelers. One of the biggest factors of my life, gone, sold, no more...
The rise of Vivid|Glitter
my own personal Phoenix
Have you ever heard of the mythical creature, the Phoenix?
phoe·nix- [fee-niks] noun :
a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope.*
So suiting I relate to the phoenix when I think of Vivid|Glitter, considering I grew up in a town named Phoenixville, wink wink..
Anyway, I feel like in a way, the loss of my uncle, of the family jewelry store, of my first place of employment as an establishment itself, helped shape my desire for Vivid|Glitter to be even the slight bit successful. Even if it only is a Facebook Page and a Blog right now. Who knows what the future has to hold. My Aunt and Uncle were in their mid thirties when they opened up their business. A small little establishment, and from what I remember my Uncle telling me, sold silver jewelry, minerals that he collected all of the world, and some custom work he created himself. Hardly what Earth's Corner grew to by 2010. The hard work my aunt and uncle put in to that store made it in to the store it was recognized for.
So, I had to tell you about how important Earth's Corner is to me, in order to say this, I feel like Vivid|Glitter is a personal Phoenix, born out of the death of my time spent with Earth's Corner Jewelers. Now, where Vivid|Glitter ends up, I don't know, but it will be fun to follow along the way, right.
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