Strength in Numbers

You know, I started this jewelry adventure a long time ago.  I think there may even be an old blog post with the story of how it happened.

But, if there is not, here is a quick summary:

1) My husband is Active Duty Army, so he spends a lot of time away from home, deployed, training, etc.

2) I have three kids, and I started this before any of them were really in school, I think the oldest may have just started Kindergarten.

3) Sometimes I get sick, when that happens, I rely on my mother heavily to watch over my kids if it's really bad. (Especially if Hubby is away).

4) When I am really sick, I can be loopy and wind up doing things I didn't really know I was doing.

One time, when I got sick like this, and hubby was away, my mother asked me to go to Shipwreck Beads, which is the worlds largest bead store, and right down the street from her house.

I woke up a few days later with over 1000 dollars spent in beads, and needed to find some way to make that gross error in judgement work for me.

Then serendipity stepped in on my behalf and accidentally introduced me to the right people to work off commission and sell my jewelry to a store on my local Army base at the time.  Absolute happy accident.

But, often I am asked in real life how I can offer such an intense return policy on my jewelry.

Well, because I know 99% of the time it will not break.  I know this because when I started making jewelry, I had three kids under the age of five and I was wearing my jewelry everywhere to promote my business which was now a little less than a 1000 dollar loss.

Kids pull, kids tug, kids want those fabulous beads all to themselves.  So over the course of learning to make jewelry, I spent a lot of time self-teaching myself to make jewelry that is pretty and will survive three kids under five years old.

Let's be honest, I didn't get the kids who come home clean from school, the ones who are every parents and teachers dream.  I got the kids who make it so a mother needs to own stock in Oxiclean and band-aids.

And those are the kids who taught me how to make jewelry that survives, that endures, that will be passed down.

There is strength in those numbers.

~Maggie~