j.Nic Designs Studio came to be in 2006 when life for me was a lot different than it is now. I left my job as a General Manager for Gap Inc to be able to spend more time at my little farm & with my then husband. It was a drastic change as before I barely had a minute to sit down & now I suddenly had all this time on my hands.

I've always been an artistic person & technically began my jewelry making career back in high school in the late 80's. I won awards for my work then & made jewelry for all the special events (proms, pagents, homecoming, etc) for the girls at school. My pieces were HUGE (it was the 80's), loaded with rhinestones & I pull some of them out now & get a good laugh. I also majored in art my first go around in college until I decided to finish up my degree in Biology but that's another story entirely ;). So I took my newly found free time & started back my hand at crafting jewelry, although this time with an entirely different aesthetic. Since I no longer had an audience of hundreds of teenage girls to sell my work to I tried my hand at Ebay. I immediately received positive responses, sold just about every piece I listed & almost literally overnight j.Nic Designs was born. I then took my work here to Etsy when the site was barely a few months old & it just seemed we were a perfect fit for each other so I said goodbye to the auctions & my shop at Ebay. And I'd like to say the rest is history but that just isn't quite the case. The hubby & I decided to part ways in 2009 & that was a really tough time. I was sad, scared & worried about making it on my own. I debated long & hard about going back to work for Gap. No longer having health insurance or a steady paycheck to depend on was really scary. But I really loved what I was doing & it brought me happiness so to quote Tim Gunn I decided to "make it work". I've set goals for myself along the way like being able to afford health insurance which I accomplished this past December (high five to me;) & am now working on saving up to buy a smaller more fuel efficient car so that I can give my 14 yr old truck, Betty, a bit of a break. If I could go back to the days of being able to afford to pay someone to cut my grass, buying the expensive coffee & having the brand new car I wouldn't do it. I'm much more satisfied & happier now cutting my own grass & drinking my cheap coffee. It's been a tough journey but well worth it.
(** Full disclosure - I do sometimes by myself a treat of expensive coffee. Some things are hard to completely give up ;) )

So it's just me & all the critters doing what we love to do. Life isn't perfect & I doubt I'll ever get rich doing this but it makes me happy & I think that's what's important. And I like to think my work brings other people happiness.. I like to think I'm sending out little smiles (or big ones) with each package that goes out my door. And I sincerely thank each & every person who has supported my work in any way. I truly couldn't have done it without you! Wishing you much happiness too! =)