COMMUNITY STORIES: BELLA FAVATA
If you can imagine a town that has surfers and farmers, that’s it.
This program has allowed me to understand both the fashion and business world. I am sadly graduating in the spring but can’t wait to soak in this last year.
I wouldn’t let my mom dress me, as I insisted on picking out my own outfits. This trend continued and I slowly began to find my own style. This creativity bled into other areas of my life and I started to show my creativity in different ways.
I then did an internship for a graphic design company called Ripcord Design, which really helped me to understand Canva and other software in terms of creating digital art and other graphic designs. Through this time working for Ripcord, I absolutely fell in love with graphic design and I knew I wanted to go farther with it.
It wasn’t until Junior year of college that I found my “passion project,” which is the main part of my story I want to share with you.
It just felt so right. In the Jim Moran program at FSU, all of my professors say that coming up with an idea is the hardest part of starting a business. But if you either come up with a solution to a problem, or are coming from a place of passion, then you’ve got your idea.
I was listening to a sermon at Downtown Community Church and our pastor Ben was talking about how we’re “made for more.” From that moment on, I couldn’t shake that phrase. It just resonated with me so much.
To me, being “made for more” means being made for more than all of the things that you have gone through in this lifetime. Whether that be the day-to-day struggles, or the trauma and rough patches of life that you have endured.
I love this phrase so much because it can apply to so many aspects of life. Whenever I am having a really bad day, I just sit and resonate in the fact that I am literally created and made for so much more than this. God has already written my story, and every challenge that comes my way will eventually be for my own good.
But I think that’s the whole point.
We have stories, and we have testimonies for a reason. It is beyond just ourselves. That is why I think it is so important to share them, to peel back the layers of ourselves and the people around us.
If it took everything so far in life to bring me to this idea, thank you Jesus. Thank you for this creativity and idea you sparked in me. It went from being something I heard in church, to doodling it everywhere for months, to the thought of “what if I made a brand around this?”
My friend Kara asked me if I wanted to join a few weeks after I launched my business, which was amazing to get to be involved in ‘Market Wednesdays’ and just promote my business. The Student-Made staff are such kind souls who are really just hoping for the success of our businesses– wanting to help however they can.
I just love how much they supported my vision. I cannot wait to continue working with Student-Made this last school year.
All I hope is that a stranger, a friend, a classmate see’s someone in one of my shirts and is consumed with curiosity. So much so that they go up in boldness and ask that person what does this mean? Am I made for more? How am I made for more?
I’m not going to lie, starting a business is very hard and plays with your head a bit. You become very numb to the work that you are producing because your mind plays tricks on you– questioning if anything you’re designing is even any good.
The amount of encouragement and conversation that has stirred up from this is all that matters to me. When I get a text from a friend saying, “someone asked today what this means and we talked about it for 20 minutes,” it literally means the world to me.
Currently, I say that I would love to do something in visual merchandising.
But my real answer is that I would love nothing more than to work on Made for More. I am hoping that I will continue to go to the Lord daily for inspiration, whether I am inspired by a bible verse I read or a sunset I saw. Creating is an amazing thing.
Make terrible pottery pieces (me), try painting, pick up a camera, or make digital art. There is something out there that can be an outlet for your creativity to flow. How lucky are we to have hands that can mold shapes, paint on easels, make oddly specific playlists, or strum a guitar.
At the end of the day, we are made for more than the things we aren’t sure of or don’t think we’d be good at.
