Photo Courtesy of Rebecca Gagnon ‘23
By Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Features Editor
Raindrops trickling from clouds topped with rainbows, chains of yellow flowers and dazzling little planets are just a few of the earrings Tasha Elizarde ’22 has made and brought to the Mount Holyoke campus since she founded her small business, “Just Claying Jewelry.” Elizarde began making jewelry during the pandemic. “I started making jewelry during quarantine as a fun side gig,” she said. “I was kind of just interested in jewelry and wanting to pick up a new hobby.”
She already knew people, such as some of her mentors, who made different types of jewelry independently, and she wanted to try her hand with it using polymer clay. A mentor of hers, who she described as an amazing artist, inspired her in particular. She started to create a lot of designs and then began to make the types of jewelry she wanted, specifically earrings.
Like many people cultivating quarantine hobbies, Elizarde turned to the internet for guidance.
“I just looked online to see how to make jewelry and polymer clay is just the easiest type, according to the internet,” Elizarde explained. “I just kind of started by reading a couple of articles and [watching] YouTube, [also] looking at a million things on Instagram and Pinterest,” she said. “It’s pretty easy to learn on your own.”
Creating the earrings is a multi-step process from “designing pieces, making and troubleshooting pieces that don’t always end up how you hoped, hooking and cleaning finished pieces, posting on social media and communicating with customers about sales, mailing or packaging orders and more,” Elizarde explained. The process can take anywhere from an hour and a half to 20 hours, depending on how complicated the designs are and how many she is making.
Though she used to make one pair of earrings at a time, she recently stopped. “I usually mass make them, the same of one design,” she said. Elizarde explained that her stud earrings take less time to make and she can make multiple at once, whereas her more complex earrings require a greater time commitment.
Making earrings began as a way to pass time over quarantine, but as time kept passing, Elizarde’s pieces accumulated. She then ran into a conundrum; she had created many earrings, but she didn’t know what to do with them. Her sister then suggested that she begin selling the earrings online.
“The first time I was selling things was actually to fundraise for [a natural disaster] that was happening in the Philippines at the time,” Elizarde said. She now sells them to both raise money for fundraisers and make money for herself.
Elizarde’s small business originally operated solely out of an Instagram account, @justclayingjewelry. Many people bought her merchandise from that platform, including some Mount Holyoke students who found her account.
When the school year started, she still had earrings left over, so she sat at a table outside the Dining Commons to sell them.
“It was mostly a spur of the moment decision,” Elizarde laughed. “I was like, ‘I need money’ and also [it was] a fun way to be able to sell stuff [and] it was something I wanted to do.”
Elizarde said that she had a pleasant experience selling her earrings, and the people who bought them were supportive and excited.
“I know I sold maybe 30 or 40 pairs of earrings,” she said. Elizarde recalled how some students even asked to help her roll out the clay to make the earrings or to help her sell them. She recounted an interaction with one customer which illustrated the joy of making art people appreciate. “I sold [the customer] a pair and they immediately put them on, and [then] they walked into Blanch … when they walked out and they were like, ‘I had someone ask me … where I bought these earrings [and] I was really happy to be able to say it was from you.’”
Examples of the earrings that Elizarde has made can be found on her Instagram page. Midnight moons with speckles of gold flakes, rainbow studs, earrings created to look like red knitted sweaters and little hearts swaying from side to side are some of designs highlighted on her Instagram.
Elizarde hopes to expand her craft by using other materials in the future. “I want the next time I sell in-person to be with new designs using acrylic, wood and/or metal in addition to my normal clay designs,” she explained. She also would like to sell them outside of Blanch again, although she has no formal plans at the moment.
Elizarde offered advice to those with ambitions to start a small business. “Time management is essential,” she stated. “People don’t realize how time-consuming making and selling art can be.” Her other advice is to “just start.” Elizarde explained how she was nervous to begin selling her earrings on Instagram because she was worried about getting negatively critiqued. However, it got easier once she started, and skill came with practice.
“Every small business is different, so advice depends on what you are wanting to do,” she said. “For making physical art, I have found that time management, budgeting, communications and organizational skills have helped me facilitate sales efficiently.”
Although Elizarde loves raising money for different causes, the act of creation is why she began making earrings.
“I just love making art,” Elizarde concluded. “I think making art is just cool [and] a very peaceful activity. You get to work a lot with your hands for this specific type of art, and it’s just wonderful seeing other people on campus being so excited to … wear them.”