CREDIT: PROVIDED BY MELINDA SKINNER
Melinda Skinner, a Fanshawe alumna, started her own jewelry-making company called Sunstone Jewels.

With a really nice, but overpriced necklace in her jewelry box, Melinda Skinner decided to take matters into her own hands.

She decided she didn't want to pay $25 for a necklace that she believed she could recreate. The now 23-year-old Fanshawe alumna headed to Michaels with hopes of adding to her necklace collection of one, little did she know this trip to Michaels would lead her to create her own business.

“I went to buy the supplies and see if I could make a few of them myself and posted them on my personal Instagram that night and I sold all four of them that night,” she said. “Then the next day I did the same thing.”

Seeing the demand over her Instagram, Skinner decided to make a Facebook page signifying the start of Sunstone Jewels.

“I had no plans of it,” she said. “I wasn't dreaming of it, it just kind of happened.”

At the time, Skinner was enrolled in Fanshawe's graphic design program; a program she says has helped immensely with starting the business and keeping it afloat.

“I don't think I would have been able to get to where I am without being in that program.”

According to Skinner, the fact that she was able to make her own posters, do all her website coding and make her business cards helped get her business's feet on the ground.

“All of that was stuff that people who are normally starting [their own] businesses have to hire people for and it can get very expensive.”

But this new found talent showed up to Skinner completely out of the blue, as she had no prior experience designing jewelry.

“I was on YouTube, I watched a few tutorials and was like, ‘Yea I can totally do this', but they were awful; I feel bad for the people who bought the first 10, they were so bad. I didn't even own a pair of pliers, I was just sitting on the couch trying to wire wrap with my hands and the crystal kept sliding out of the wires.”

But as she kept practicing, the jewelry kept getting better and she started to find her own style.

“I started out wire wrapping, that was the first five months, wrapping pendants, they were popular and that's what people wanted,” Skinner said. “I have kind of strayed away from it, now most of my stuff is crystal based.”

And with her unique style and growing business, Sunstone Jewels is approaching its third birthday and Skinner has decided to move to Hamilton to see if she can set roots up there and grow her business further.

“I have to get familiar with Hamilton and tap into the handmade community here, but it should be good,” Skinner said.

She is hoping that 2017 will be an “up-scaling year for the company” and that she wants to make sure that Sunstone Jewels will be something she continues forever.

When asked about what business advice she would give to aspiring students looking to find their way, Skinner urged people to make sure they are 100 per cent committed to their idea.

“It takes so much to put in your time, energy and your finances into this business that you have no idea where it's going to go,” Skinner said. “It could go great [or] it could go absolutely horrible, you have to have that deep down passion that you want it to succeed because if you don't have that, it is going to fizzle out.”

To find out more about Sunstone Jewels, visit sunstonejewels.com.