COMMUNITY STORIES: MADISON BULLOCK
As a child I was always drawn to arts and crafts. I would create clothing and houses for my stuffed animals, and make endless creations with whatever materials I could find. This often included digging through the trash until I found the perfect supplies. When I was a kid, my household lived on a tight budget so I often made toys or other things that I wanted.
I took sculpture for three years which was a major part of my school experience. When the decision for college came up I wanted to select a major where I could continue being creative and using skills learned from my experience in sculpture.
I have also been working on sewing quilts but those definitely take more time! I started this business only last year in January and it has been crazy to see how much it has grown. During my sophomore year I learned about Student-Made and became a creator. Being part of Student-Made has helped me find a great community of fellow creators to be a part of.
This ranged from random sewing projects, crochet projects, art pieces, and more. I always considered these comments and questioned if what I made was something I would like to sell. However, I always answered with “no, these take too long to make” or “this seems like a really specific item that would probably be hard to sell”, or “starting a business takes a lot of effort and I just don’t have the time.”
After a while some of my coworkers started requesting necklaces and bracelets and soon after even some of our regular customers! I was shocked that people wanted to buy my jewelry especially because many of my first customers were men. This was intimidating since I had really only made feminine designs so far.
With a free first semester and a much more limited market than other large selling platforms like Etsy, I decided to go for it! I went in with the mindset of putting my best effort forward but always with a very realistic view that this could be a huge failure.
When I first started I just made everything up as I went. During my first semester I was mostly experimenting what products sold the best, what materials offered the best quality, and what I wanted to focus on. My few sales I made through the semester kept me wanting to continue even when it seemed easier to give up.
In the fall I released my first big collection of six different styles, each inspired by national parks around the country.
This collection has been a huge success and brought in tons of sales. Since then, I’ve added one more national park style with two more on their way for the start of this coming semester (so keep your eye out for those!). I feel like this new collection has really separated my business from the masses and created a more unique product.
I have a lot more national parks to make sets for! Using national parks to inspire my work not only helps me creatively, but it helps me see nature in a more abstract way, and creates a product people can connect to. The more national parks I create, the harder it gets to make more since at the end of the day, many look quite similar.
I often like to look deeper than just the basic colors of these parks and incorporate defining landscape features. For example, the sequoia design I currently sell, includes dark greens and mauve tones that are the large sequoia trees. But, in between these beads are gold and white tones that reflect how the sunlight shines through the tops of these majestic trees.
