March 2020 Meet the Maker Challenge - via Blog, Day One

Hello friends!

I'm going to participate in the "Meet the Maker" challenge this year, usually done via Instagram. But because we all have busy lives and such, I'm going to do it via Blog.

It's possible I will be posting the daily prompts well after March ends, but, I think this is a fun little thing to do for you to get to know me better!

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Ok, so I'm going to play a slow catch up and just start with the first one, "Story."

1. "Story"

Ahh, the story of how I started Greetings by Jenny. 

I'm Jenny. I'm 28 years young and I live in Chicago. I moved to Chicago almost 3 years ago to start my life over.

My life was an absolute f*cking disaster prior to May of 2017. I was addicted, hopelessly, to alcohol & a slew of drugs. I had been battling the addiction since I graduated from college in December of 2014, but, looking back, it started before then. It was just that the graduation of college and moving on to my "adult" life exacerbated the problem, and I could no longer hide underneath the guise of a binge-drinking college student.

Anyway, after multiple, MULTIPLE attempts at sobriety, I finally got my act together after an awful string of events that required me to take a real hard look at life and whether or not I wanted to live it. I picked up at I moved to Chicago to give life a second chance, and that's how I ended up in this great city.

I dabbled in a bunch of different things (besides work) to keep my hands and mind busy, like coaching & playing volleyball, but around the December of 2018, I was finding myself pretty exhausted from working & coaching volleyball, but I still needed something to do to keep myself in check.

Cue, old magazines. I started making a bunch of silly postcards, and I was having fun & laughing while doing it.

I participated in my first event at Esquina Chicago, where I sold ~$60 worth of postcards, and I was immediately in love with making & selling things, along with meeting new friends.

From there, I signed up for more shows, and with the money I made, I was buying better materials. I started doing bigger & more expensive events, but the best part of all of it was meeting new, friendly, genuine people.

Today, I'm making so much more than greeting cards. I am making apparel, accessories, stickers, and magnets. I'm supplying several shops with my artwork, I'm doing custom projects (including addressing wedding envelopes, design services, and local brands' merch), and I started my own popup called Handmade Happy Hours.

So that's a very short version of how this thing started!

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More to come for #marchmeetthemaker challenge. Thanks for reading & stay tuned :)

Jenny