My name is Brittnay, I live on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, but am originally from West Palm Beach, Florida. I have four children, their ages range from 6 years to 15 years old. I am new to Jewelry Design, Repurposing, and restoring, as well as creating jewelry. However, I have always been a mixed-media crafter and enjoy all kinds of art and crafts. I took drawing and painting in college, as well as some private lessons in clay throwing, but I have mostly been self-taught in other areas. I come from a long line of women on my mother's side who were vintage/antique collectors, who would make money restoring, redecorating, and repurposing furniture and decor. I started learning about Jewelry after joining many of the rock and mineral clubs throughout New England. Likewise, I loved and still love collecting minerals, rocks, crystals, fossils, gems, shells, and beach glass. Collecting them was the easy part, and I always come up with ideas of things I would like to do with them, but the hardest part for me has been starting and completing (mostly completing) projects. I was working in a social work position as a lead case manager of a homeless shelter for a few years, and I enjoyed the work. I would see people around me who were finding ways to not only create but make a living or at least supplement their income with what they love to do, and I felt envious that I could not figure that out. When my basement became overflowing with all the stuff, the beginnings of projects, or the evidence of hopeful future projects, and of course bucket and buckets of rocks and such, so I got a cabbing machine, and rock tumbler, and thought I could learn to wire wrap or something similar but then a good friend from one of my rock and mineral clubs introduced me to vintage costume jewelry and ever since then I have been researching, sourcing, and learning about different types of antique/vintage costume jewelry and trying to learn how to become an online seller, which so far I have had many blocks and struggles to get past the researching part. I hope to be a part of a community of like-minded people and learn from each other, people who are or have similar struggles, and want to share stories, etc. I watch a ton of videos from YouTube and get a lot of Info off there, but I also feel like the videos I watch of the people whose videos show on the feed are at a totally different level than I am at and there is little where people speak about the mental blocks as well as real life issues that come up, unless I am alone with these struggles 😜