Inspiration struck business sophomore Monika Cavanagh on a family vacation to San Francisco when she purchased a necklace with a pressed daisy suspended inside — her favorite necklace to this day.
The daisy necklace turned into the inspiration for Cavanagh’s Etsy website, AustinSolFlowers, which began as just a small project in her Jester West dorm room about a year ago. Cavanagh scavenges campus, Home Depot and bluebonnet fields for flowers to press. She then attaches her floral designs with epoxy resin to clear phone cases bulk ordered from China in her laundry room because of the epoxy resin’s harsh smell.
“I love flowers,” Cavanagh said. “They’re art on their own. The reason it’s just kind of a hobby is because of my classes and clubs.”
While other students may harbor creative ambitions, those who act upon them by beginning businesses from their cramped rooms face unique challenges while maintaining a business and balancing classes. Free time is no longer free for student entrepreneurs, who instead spend their spare moments fulfilling orders, maintaining selling platforms and continually creating.
Like Cavanagh, architecture senior Maxine Kraft was inspired by a necklace. Kraft noticed girls wearing trendy wrap necklaces, found supplies at her local Hobby Lobby store, and her Etsy business, CraftbyKraft, was born. Kraft’s jewelry site has been visited worldwide and maintains a steady level of popularity with southern college students.
“It was pretty hard-building inventory,” Kraft said. “I’m always in studio working long hours so I never really know when I’m going to be free. Working on my own time has helped with balancing everything else.”
Studio art junior Nikki Denkler said she doesn’t face the same time management challenges as Cavanagh and Kraft because she mainly sells art already made for class assignments off her website and art Instagram profile, @denklerdesigns. Denkler, a self-professed perfectionist, admits her art classes take up a lot of time, but pay off in the end.
“Hamilton”, a 6-foot-by-7-foot abstract painting inspired by the soundtrack from “Hamilton” is Denkler’s favorite. She said it is difficult for her to put a price on pieces she’s
attached to.
“Putting a price on something I’ve made seemed really hard to me,” Denkler said. “I’m still a college student, so I didn’t know what my art is worth.”
She received advice from a professor who urged her to sell her work at a price that made her happy and content with giving up one of her paintings so someone else could start
enjoying her work.
Though pricing can be another challenge faced by student artists like Denkler, advertising junior Ashley Piontek said the business side of her art comes naturally.
Originally a business major, Piontek transferred into advertising her sophomore year after realizing she couldn’t fully express her creative tendencies. Piontek began her Etsy site AwedbyeARTh this last winter after deciding to take her art more seriously. She has always been drawn to watercolor prints and makes a lot of prints in her free time, which helps her keep her inventory for her site full.
Piontek runs her site out of her apartment and works on about five to six orders per week. She said keeping up with orders, especially custom ones, is hard with balancing classes, but pushes herself to get the orders done in her spare time.
Despite the struggles that accompany running her shop, Piontek, like Cavanagh, Kraft and Denkler, advocates taking time to develop personal passions and seeing if the product could be profitable.
“If you have a talent, just go ahead and list it on Etsy,” Cavanagh said. “What is there to lose? If you’re making money off something you love doing, it’s barely like working.”
