Because of her love of crafts, sophomore Maddie White begins an earring business on Instagram with her twenty-six-year-old best friend.

“I have always loved crafting, and I was seeing all these people making these things and I knew that I have the abilities to do it on my own,” White said. “So, when I have extra free time I went out and I just started practicing it and then once I got good at it I decided to come to sell some.”

She starts out from scratch with clay that she buys from Joanne’s or Hobby Lobby and begins hand making the designs.

“I used a form of clay, and then I had to do each layer of the design and then bake them,” White said. “Sometimes I might look on Pinterest for an inspiration of a theme or I might just do a fun random pattern or marble.”

Each pair is eight dollars. They do pre-made and custom orders.

“They’d [customers] be like, ‘Hey I have an idea for this,’ and they could send me like a drawing or an idea they had,” White said. “And most of the time, with custom pairs I would make it, and if they didn’t like it. I just wouldn’t charge them for it.”

With their business growing quickly, they have to make sure they keep track of their orders.

“When I get an order, if it’s a premade pair, I will enter into the computer and then get the pair and plan to meet the person, or ship it to them,” White said. “But if it’s a custom order or remake, I’ll make a plan to start making the pair.”

Their Instagram account is called @spunky.designs_. To further their business, they are planning on creating an Etsy very soon.

“We started an Instagram, and a bunch of people shouted us out, so we have some people we know,” White said. “And then we have a bunch we don’t know who will buy from us. We have some in a hair salon in Fayetteville, and we are starting an Etsy soon.”

With 300-400 pairs sold, they have learned the best ways to advertise their products.

“We started by just following everyone we knew, and we would wear them out and post pictures of them and tag the account and people would shout us out when they got theirs,” White said. “So we kind of grew our network by just like shouting out and free advertisement.”

Loving this business, but still waiting to see what the future holds, White is still unsure if she will keep pursuing this journey.

“I do really enjoy it, it’s really fun, and it has made it back so we’ll see,” White said