Just a girl with a dream

Yesterday, after buying 50 feet of necklace chain, I went to Por Que No for some delicious Mexican food. My friend, Genna and I got to thinking...when did we start this crazy venture into jewelry? A Pabst and some food later, this is what we came up with.

Cue back to August.... Exhausted and starving after yoga, Genna and I go on a hunt for the internet and food. We ended up sitting outside Bartini at 10:00 at night mapping out our lives with a multi-color Hello Kitty pen and some paper. We made a pact to do whatever it takes to get back to France, and spent the rest of the night brainstorming everything we need to do.

About a month (and many early coffee research dates) later, we had the breakthrough that we definitely wanted to move back to Paris. Other cities in France are charming, quaint, interesting, but ultimately not Paris. We rationalized that there are also more job opportuinities for us in Paris. We knew that living in Paris wouldn't be easy,and that we would probably need multiple jobs. One of the ways we wanted to fund this dream was through Etsy. We both made jewelry and knew that it was small and easy to transport, and we could even establish ourselves in Portland prior to moving.

Everything just kind of spiraled from there. We started meeting twice a week to working on our Etsy shops. I decided that I wanted to really launch myself into the blogging world, vowing to write a post every weekday. Genna works at the French American International School, and got us a table at their annual holiday market. From there, we started looking on Craigslist for more vendor opportunities. The CRAVE Business chat was next. We got to meet the wonderful and talented Betsy Cross of Besty and Iya and Katy Kippen of Grayling Jewelry. Their talk was so encouraging and inspiring! It felt great to have two well-established jewelry designers tell me that I could do it, too! After the chat, we spoke with a CRAVE representative, and BAM, we had a spot at their huge shopping event.

Fast forward to now... I'm legally registered as a business in Oregon, just made my first wholesale supply purchase, have four markets to prep for, an awesome display and a photoshoot lined up. I'm so excited/anxious/nervous/afraid of what's to come. All I know is I'm going to be insanely busy until the end of December.

Thank you for all of the support! And don't think I've forgotton about Paris... that plan is still in the works.

Happy Wednesday!