One of the things that I love most about making jewelry is that every day brings something new. I truly enjoy making unique pieces that call out to people, and best of all I get to connect with the customers that need them!
I love that it is always something different every day. I always dreamed of being able to do crafting for a living, and I’m grateful that my art form brings enough abundance that I am able to stick with it. As a single mom of four children, it’s important to me to be able to be at home with my kids instead of always stuck at work. Thankfully, we’re able to enjoy a loving, peaceful environment at home. This means that I can be relaxed and have all good intentions set on my pieces of art. Also, if I have the privilege of connecting with you as a client to work on a custom piece, I will keep you and your intentions in my mind while I work. This allows my intuition to guide me to help you with whatever you need to release or to manifest in your life.
Coming from a long line of women with spiritual gifts hasn’t always been an easy path to understand. My gifts began when I was a small child. As a kid, I can remember seeing shadows in the older homes that we lived in and feeling afraid. The houses were congested with spirits and since the spirits knew that I could see them, they would always walk toward me. Even when I would try to ignore them, they would still attempt interacting with me. On occasion, family members who had passed on would also appear to me. While they didn’t frighten me quite as much, I still didn’t understand what they were or why it was happening. In addition, my dream world has always been a huge part of my life. As a child my dreams were all jumbled, twisted and didn’t make much sense. However just like with the spirits, with age I’ve learned to understand that my dreams are more prophetic in nature. Now through prophetic and lucid dreaming, I can see what’s coming.
My love for creating started at a very young age. When I was five or six, my grandma taught me to sew. Since I’ve always loved my animals, I made blankets and clothes for my dogs and cats. In fact, most of my time outside school was spent sewing or making some type of art. Especially after we moved up north to Charlevoix. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time crafting in my room when I was ten years old. In junior high and high school, I had a great group of friends and was on the soccer team. We moved to the farm when I was around 15 or 16. However, everything changed one day without warning when my mom got sick. During this time people were trying to prepare me for the worst, but deep inside I always felt that she would recover. I can remember hearing them talking about how serious her condition was, but I always knew in my heart that they were wrong. After she was released from the hospital, she needed constant care. So, for the next 2-3 years I became her caregiver. During this time, our roles were reversed, and I began to learn how to do things like prepare dinner, change her IV, and remove and re-apply dressings to her surgical site multiple times a day. Even though these tasks were difficult I still had plenty of time to be a typical teenage girl. The only thing that changed was that our relationship only grew stronger. In a lot of ways we are now closer than ever.
I did have a rebellious streak, but it lost its flavor after a couple of years. At 17, I got pregnant with my eldest daughter. Unfortunately, the school wouldn’t let me continue to attend because of my pregnancy. Therefore, I finished high school from home, and she was born shortly after I graduated. For the next few years, I worked as a waitress. Whenever I had free time, I would go walking the beach to pick up beach glass. My second girl was born when I was 21 and two years later, I learned how to do wire wrapping. The beach glass I had been collecting over the years made beautiful wraps that I would get compliments on whenever I would wear them. Shortly after, I started selling them to customers and the girls at work. However, I had no idea what was about to happen. It was just a hobby, right?
It wasn’t long before I started looking into crystals to research their healing properties. People would ask me about the pieces I was making, and I would teach them about the benefits of each one and what might work best for their needs. Finally, I took the leap of faith and started Katie’s Crystals when I was 25.
At first, I was just selling locally at craft fairs. However, it wasn’t long before I did my first big show at the Mushroom Festival. It was around $80 to be a vendor, and at that time I was really pinching pennies together to make it happen. Before long, I was able to move over to selling on my Facebook page and then finally expanded to an Etsy shop.
Really, I have been extremely focused on my goals for the past couple of years. It is extremely important to me that we maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. Therefore, I have been doing yoga and staying active with the kids to stay fit. As for the future, I want to move back to the country and be more self-sustainable through gardening and canning. I also want to keep growing my business and teaching my children well so they can carry on the family business of helping people for the greater good.
~ Love, Katie