Backstory

Well I decided to do a post that tells you all a little bit about myself.

My name of course is Amy Doyle. I was born and raised in the Virginia Beach & Norfolk areas of Virginia. I am 34 and I am married and have been with my husband since 1996. We have 2 children together. Our son was born in 2000 and our daughter was born in 2004. Our daughter was born with mild Spina Bifida. She is able to feel her legs and has full use of them, but she has complications and some paralyzation in her bladder & bowels. Her left kidney is now a bit smaller than the other due to stress in her early months while they figured out her valve was messed up and letting urine back into her kidney. We have had struggles along the way and have been denied for help from disability but we have managed to push through it all. We were forced to move away from our home town and family and friends due to hospital bills and being denied insurance as well. That is how we ended up here in West Virginia. Here she got the surgery she needed and one of our friends along with my uncle and my mother moved here to be with us. We have built ourselves back up and I am proud to say that through hard work my daughter now uses the bathroom on her own. She has to wear goodnights, but she sits on the toilet and can push out everything on her own. Something we were told she would never do.

Now before we moved I had started getting interested in making jewelry. As a teenager I drew constantly and loved anything to do with art. Jewelry really was what sparked my interests and flared my passions. I started out with hemp. The cost was low and the weaving was simple. Once we moved here, I decided to expand and try new things and thus began making more beaded pieces, learning about materials through trial and error. I had no help and no one to teach me, I just picked it up and looked online when I got stumped. I started selling stuff to family and friends and eventually ended up with an Etsy store and Facebook page. I was told that jewelry was a hard seller because so many people sold jewelry on Etsy and that I would fair better if I added more variety of things to my shop. So that really got the sparks flying. I started picking up anything and everything I could. It actually became more a challenge thing to me. I see something I like and I immediately start thinking of how I can make it. I have so much now, and I make so many things that Etsy doesn't even have enough categories for me to fit them in, I have even had to double up almost every section and it is still not enough. One of my goals this year is to start my own retail website. Then hopefully I can customize it and have more with added sections and can expand more than Etsy is currently allowing me.

My goal and hope for the future is to open up my own store and to showcase my items into collections. I want to add bigger items that are harder and more expensive to ship, so I avoid putting them online. I enjoy what I do and can not see myself doing anything else any more. This truly is my passion and I hope that my small success continues and my shop grows and I will be able to make a living one day doing what I love most.

I thank you for taking time to stop by. I hope you will stop by my Etsy shop and take a look around at what I have to offer. Spiritual Pathways Boutique