The super crafty, cool, and colorful Jennifer Perkins took out a bit of time quite some time ago to chat a bit with us about all things crafty, and inspiring, and she also shares some handy dandy business tips as well! Just in case you are not familiar with Jennifers work: she is the host of the DIY’s Network Craft Lab, the founder of The Naughty Secretarys Club, and Co-founder of the fabulous Austin Craft Mafia. Jennifer screams all things creative and as you can see from her studio below, she engulfs herself with creative inspiration to create her own designs. She also has a new book out on the bookshelves called “The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girl’s Guide to Handmade Jewelry” which is “packed with more than 50 kitschy-secretary-themed jewelry projects, plus lots of quirky sidebars covering hot topics such as office romance and the best secretary theme songs to listen to on your lunch break. You’ll learn how to use your office supplies in a whole new way – did you know standard office fare, like binder folders and shredded junk mail, makes craftalicious jewelry? Plus, author Jennifer Perkins will teach you how to turn almost anything into a charm, including plastic gnome cake toppers, doll furniture and cast-off hotel keys.” Now how cool is that! So I hope you enjoy this kitschy crafty goodness! Here’s Jennifer (psst, don’t forget to check out her blog):
JuBella: Why is creativity important to you?
Jennifer: Creativity is very important to me because it is an expression of who I am. Individuality is something that has always been so important to me. Even as a child unlike most of the other little girls who really wanted to fit in and have the latest styles, I was always insistent that I not look like everyone else. Sometimes that would be augmented by early attempts at jewelry making or decorating a T-shirt with some splatter paint. Creativity is something I can’t live with out. When I am in Los Angeles 5 weeks out of the year filming Craft Lab, the nights and weekends are hard for me because I want to be creating, and doing, and making. Even though I spend all day making crafts with guests on set, at night I am feeling so inspired and excited about whatever new crafty skill I learned that day & I want to try it out. If I did soldering that day on the show I want to come home to my studio and get out my soldering iron and play. Sadly I can’t take that stuff with me to LA. So it’s not that creativity is important to me, creativity is crucial to me. I can’t survive without it, I wouldn’t know how. I was always encouraged to make and create by my super crafty mother so it is all I really know.
Jubella: How would you describe your most creative spot/atmosphere?
Jennifer: I get inspiration from so many different things it is hard to pick just one. I really love going to flea markets and antique malls and digging through all the dusty goodies looking for an overlooked treasure that to me beckons to be made into a bauble. It may have started life as a baby rattle in the 1940’s shaped like a monkey, but I see it as a necklace. I love living in Austin. It is a very eclectic college town with a very arty music and creativity driven scene. The girls dress up and I get inspired seeing all the different looks. My best friends are my fellow Austin Craft Mafia members so it is hard not to look at their outfits, homes and general beaming creativity and not be inspired.
JuBella: Favorite Craft magazine?
Jennifer: I really loved Adorn [no longer in print] and thought it was a great looking magazine with a lot of really hip and fun ideas. Craft Magazine has some really cute ideas inside & Ready Made is the old stand by for crafty types!
JuBella: How would you describe the character/decor of your studio/design space?
Jennifer: Well my studio use to be the master bedroom in our home & we slept in one of the smaller guest bedrooms. Now my studio is located in our newly converted 500 square foot garage! I have shelving everywhere holding beads, baubles and various other crafty goodies. I have large pieces of peg board hanging on several walls dripping with jewelry. There is also an old 1950’s kitchen piece in the office that has doors that I keep stuffed full of various bits ranging from printer paper to fishing lures (for jewelry of course not fishing).
JuBella: What have been some of the biggest challenges with being an artist, starting your own business, and promoting your work all at the same time…what advice would you give to others in the same boat?
Jennifer: Just getting started can be tricky. Taking that initial leap is always intimidating. Once you get started, the more successful your business becomes the more stressful it is too. When you just get started it is fun to send out a few orders a month and there is not a lot of drama. Naughty Secretary Club has been my full time business for 5 plus years now so there are all kinds of new concerns. Payroll taxes, incorporation filings, website redesigns, hiring employees, lawyer bills and more. You just need to make sure to not try and micro manage too much or you are never going to have time for you or time to create. The other important thing for people getting started in their own crafty business to remember is that there is no sense in reinventing the wheel. When I got started with Naughty Secretary Club I teamed up with Tina Sparkles from Sparkle Craft and Jenny Hart from Sublime Stitching. We were all starting our companies at the same time so it was easy for us to bounce ideas off of each other and if one had a new shopping cart that worked great we all used it, if another one was getting a great response from an ad in Bust magazine we all took one out. There are lots of great resource sites online that you can look at like the Austin Craft Mafia and Craftster. Not to mention there are a million great books out there, grab starting a small business for dummies to learn the fundamentals. The creative design end of starting a crafty business is the easy part, so get help for the harder parts.
JuBella: What is your favorite craft product thus far and what have you enjoyed making with it the most?
Jennifer: I got my start making jewelry with casting resin. I would use square molds and clear resin and embed images inside. The versatility of the stuff is really cool. Not only can you embed images but you can embed stuff, like small trinkets or glitter. You can also use pigments to die resin and almost anything can be used as a mold. I don’t use resin anymore in my jewelry mainly because it is super messy and stinky. I was offering like 20 different styles of jewelry and was being forced to make the same thing over and over again and I found it really limiting. Resin is fun, but time consuming so there was never a free minute to work on my one of a kind revamped vintage designs which is my true passion.
JuBella: What crafting tools could you not live without?
Jennifer: There are several. I love my Dremmel tool. I have 3. I can use this little baby to drill holes in things that were not originally a charm, but after they get a hole in them they are. It has a sanding bit for getting rid of rough edges. There is a bit for about anything you can think of: engraving, cutting and more! I use enough E600 glue to put together an entire house, it is the best glue ever for jewelry design. My ergonomic jewelry pliers. They are puffy and don’t hurt my hands.
Ok, I hope you enjoyed this interview. You can read more about Jennifers crafty studio here on Modish. I have another one coming up this week..she’s another crafty lady, that makes the coziest things and inspires us all daily..can you guess who she is? I know, I practically gave it away!
