I’ve always had the need to create.  As a kid, I loved arts and crafts.  As a teen, I played with a variety of mediums like knitting, cross stitching, and friendship bracelets made from string.  I loved seeing the finished product of my hard work. I don’t remember the first time I picked up jewelry making, but it was after college. I had taken a metal working class where I learned to make rings and bracelets out of silver wire and just like that, I was hooked!  I remember I had a wedding to go to, so I made my own crystal bracelet with matching earrings. I would then just make any necklace or bracelet or earring to match my clothes. 

I am always inspired by nature.  My first dozen necklaces were flowers. I put flowers on everything.  I even made wine glass charms with them!

I wanted to sell at local art fairs, but I needed a name.  As I was brainstorming, I said “jewelCari” out loud to my husband.  He replied, “Drew Carey?” I said no, “jewelCari!” But it was too late.  The name had stuck.  And it was catchy!  I attended a few art fairs before I gave it up in favor of starting a family.

Fast-forward 15 years later and the pandemic is upon us.  There was endless time to fill, I was stuck at home, what to do, what to do? Oh yes, cleaning out that closet is a great idea. Wait, what’s that giant box? It’s my old stash of jewelry supplies!! Come out, come out, and let me see what’s inside!  Oh, it had been years. I didn’t even know what was in there. The creative juices started to flow.  My first new creation was to design a mask lanyard with my daughter – thank you coronavirus. We had everything we needed and a beautiful lanyard was designed by my daughter that she uses every day.  Now could I put that box back in the closet and forget about it again!? No. I thought, “if I could just make designs out of it, turn it into something useful, maybe I can create beautiful jewelry with the added bonus of cleaning out my closet!” And so, the idea of jewelCari was born again!

Now that I had my goal, I had to focus. I’m a mom. Stuck at home. My work office is closed. I don’t have much reason to get dressed in the morning.  However, my touch of normal, my little bit of sparkle was to always put on earrings. It was like makeup for my ears that I never had to wash off!  I noticed that I gravitated towards the simple, the elegant, the classy. I always grabbed the minimal ones; not too fancy, but just sweet enough to be comfortable throughout the day.  A single color, a single stone, not too long, not a boring stud. I purchased enough material to make 100 pairs of earrings and after a few weeks, the earrings were mostly made.  Now what? Oh, go on eBay, they said. Or how about Etsy? Sure, let’s give it the good ol’ college try. I quickly found out that making the earrings was the easy part! Now I had a To-Do List that was a mile long.  It included signing up for an Etsy page, creating a store, getting Instagram, figuring out how to make a webpage, marketing, branding, SEO, etc, etc, etc. Yikes.  So little by little, things are getting crossed off my list. The best advice that I came across during a ton of internet research was “if you wait for things to be perfect, they’ll never happen. Just do it!” And so I did.