The last (almost) year has been extremely challenging. My career in the events world in NY was once extremely fulfilling - it was engaging, dynamic and HIGH energy. To state the obvious, Covid-19 wiped out my field and 6 years of hard work, consistently proving myself to keep my name on people’s minds, often being asked back for new or recurring projects by agencies that appreciated my work, was all gone.

In came months of a little too much down time. My quarantine was not simply adjusting to working from home, but adjusting to not working at all, as well as the lack of ability to use my new found (and quite rare) free time for much of anything due to Covid restrictions.

I went through the classic lockdown phases of new recipes, online workouts, zoom happy hours and pushed myself to use my downtime for creativity. Unfortunately world of unemployment world assistance isn’t catered to freelancers and while mentally creativity was so important, financially it wasn’t sustainable. But eventually out of that push came a small, but quite relevant business - making custom mask chains! The best part really has been the support I’ve received and friendships it’s rekindled when we get to talking about patterns, accent beads and making everyone’s mask chain truly their own.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of people who have purchased a chain (shout out to those who now have one for every mask!). It has been a learning experience - I knew nothing about running a small business and never expected it to continue this long. I’ve learned about building a website, strengthened my customer service skills, gotten creative with sourcing and of course had a lot of fun with designs and ideas. Pushing myself as truly paid off - I was written up in the Skimm, raised over $300 for Breast Cancer Awareness and was even featured on NBC New York!

Thank you to everyone who has supported my business venture thus far and if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet - welcome!