Falling into glass
I fell into lampworking in 2009. I was creatively dying in a office job that I had only had for about three months. I was a classically trained chef at Johnson and Wales University and had worked at a few restaurant and sales jobs before that. I was desperately looking for anything else and was looking at one of those jobs websites and ran across a listing for a glass bead maker. I had never even thought about lampworking before that but it was creative and I could work from home, for me there was nothing better. The glass company was going thru some growing pains and it took me another month and multiple emails but I got the job. They taught me the basics of lampworking and I made thousands and thousands of Chamilia beads over the next four years.
I found that the job was again lacking in creativity. It paid great and I got to work from home but it was the same thing over and over and over for four years. So at about the three and a half year mark I really started wanting something else, so in the very little free time I had I started messing around with focal beads and other little creatures. A whole new world opened up to me.
Just about the time I couldn't make another bead the company I worked for started slowing down and that is when I decided to open my Etsy store. It took a little while but now I have the most wonderful customers:) Some of the best ideas I get are from them. They push me, in a good way, to try new things that I otherwise would not have tried.
If you had told me when I was in college to be a chef that by the time I was 35 that I would be on my third career I would have laughed at you. They say things happen for a reason and who know if I would have fallen into lampworking, for me the best thing ever, if I hadn't gone thru all the rest!
