How did you start making Lucy’s Lockets

by Lucy Farmer July 29, 2014

I love this question. I never set out to be a jewelry designer. I did decide in high school that I would  be a buyer for a major department store. I had my eye on Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, but close to home was Parisian. Yes, the department store of the South. It was the bomb.com growing up and practically in my backyard. So, I went to school and studied Marketing and Fashion Merchandising, did an internship with Parisian one summer and they offered me a job upon graduation. It was a dream come true!!

While working in the buying office for Parisian, they were bought out. Things changed quite a bit. The one that stands out now is the 40% off discount went to 25%! Hello! NOT GOOD. I stayed on for a year or two, had a stint at BellSouth aka AT&T, stayed at home raising two babies and decided to buy a scrapbooking store. WHAT? Yeah, more of that from this blog in 2008 <that’s pretty much the beginning of my blogging career. If you have a few months, you can read through that and see the changes that brought me here. I wasn’t a “full-time” blogger. Living and not blogging felt better to me. I do regret not writing more for myself. Getting those memories down is fun. Especially when I can go back and read stories and see pictures. Again, you can see a lot here. 

Read this part if you want to know a little behind the story about my start at Southern Accents.

Now, to answer that question. Being the marketing director for Southern Accents to me, meant to be creative. To find ways to get the world to know about Southern Accents. Facebook was new and a great outlet to show the world what was in this little shop in this little town of Cullman, Alabama. We did a lot of DIY posting, a lot of history behind pieces, and a lot of where this came from. The guys that worked there knew I loved the pieces with texture, chippy paint, the unusual. Somehow they started finding little pieces of hardware and putting them in my “drawer”. They have this amazing cabinet full of drawers and my name was on one…in colored marker and bubble letters. I loved these little tokens, but felt like they would get lost. How could I create something using these little baubles and give them a new life that they might not otherwise ever see?

Back to those scrapbooking days, there was that time at CHA when one of the companies decided jewelry making was a great fit for a paper store. That same CEO that sold me a Slice machine, roped me into buying a bunch of jewelry. The store closed shortly after and I think my idea was to sell it at The Spotted Zebra? Who knows now. I did make jewelry. I think I even sold some. Shout out if you have one! Point being……….I had some chain at home, jump rings and pliers and I knew how to use them! I made a necklace out of a keyhole. This keyhole right here. 

That’s how it began and then I started collecting boxes of hardware. Looking for chain in all the wrong places and saving as many old things as I could. #isaveoldthings is my favorite hashtag. This has been a fun adventure. Southern Makers was a great beginning last year and this year was very successful for Lucy’s Lockets. I found out at Haven that my jewelry was something a lot of people were interested in and then The Chapel Market and Layla. So many wonderful events to get to this place. I’m so happy to have taken this path  and I know there will be many paths, turns, dead ends and sharp curves to take. I can’t wait! 

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