The “public” stuff…
Susan has been involved in arts and crafts ever since she was little. She was sewing by the time she was 6, painting tempera wildlife scenes soon after that, and has created countless handmade gifts for friends all her life.
During college she took a left turn into the restaurant business and stayed there for the better part of 20 years but her dream of living a more creative life won out in the end.
Now several years later with 2 children and 3 other art related businesses, “Charming Trinkets” is the main focus of Susan’s attention.Susan is a one woman show, designing and hand creating each jewelry piece herself. Her distinctive themed pieces allow you to show off your crazier side and all the things you love. Susan’s motto is to never create anything too serious and hopes everyone that comes in contact with her jewelry will find a reason to smile.
The Beginning…
The minute I think I’m not creative one of my family members will say, “You’ve been drawing and painting since you were two!” And they’d be right! I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t something creative going on. My Mother and I were always doing something. When I was little she painted antiquing glazes all over our kitchen cabinets. Remember the kits they sold? There were two colors of paint then a brownish glazing liquid. She not only did the cabinets but several pieces of furniture. Then there were the birthday party cakes. One year we found a recipe in, maybe, Ladies Home Journal. It called for you to use cans as the baking pans. We made a teddy bear. Chocolate cake in four or five soup cans that we’d cleaned and saved. I poured too much batter in the tins and there was cake everywhere in our oven.
A close friend of the family started me on sewing when I was 6 or 7. Would you believe my first project was a tailored jacket? Yes, she gave me a slippery floral patterned fabric and a jacket pattern and asked me to make it! I’ve been hooked ever since. Later on during high school I found a thousand other creative things that I fell in love with. Drawing, photography, printmaking, weaving, painting…I did it all at one time or another.
In the midst or somewhere in the middle…
After high school I started a career in the restaurant business that would span the better part of 20 years. College, even though I attended for awhile, for one reason or another just wasn’t for me. So much of the restaurant biz was fun, exciting, and the experience was pretty priceless. I’ve done just about every job from cocktail waitress to bartender to general manager. But somewhere inside yourself, when you’ve flung yourself into a vocation that wasn’t really your hearts choosing, you become disillusioned and, well, grumpy! When you start to feel like you don’t want to get in the car and go to work, you know you have a problem. Mine took me a couple years to figure out.
Getting married sorta solved my dilemma for me. It’s funny how the people you love and let in sometimes can know you better than you know yourself. One day he says to me, “Honey, you just need to quit.” And in that one statement life changed almost completely.
Far, far, far from the end.
Today daily life is all about us. That sounds pretty self centered, doesn’t it? Well, my husband and I both work from home. Yes, we are together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Most people I run into ask me if we want to kill each other and the answer is NO! Actually its the polar opposite! We have two busy, busy kids and they are our priority. Running back and forth to school, events, homework, grocery shopping…you name it, we do it. And we do it as a family. And we have dinner together every night. We like it that way.
Mixed up with that is my little business. I have a fabulous studio, most times it looks like a grenade was launched in it, but it’s mine and I love every square messy inch of it. My main focus is my jewelry line, Charming Trinkets, but I have a zillion other things going on under the surface of that disguise.
