PLYMOUTH − There are lots of phrases that could possibly be used to explain Jessica Parks.

She’s a Manomet house owner, spouse and mom, a jewellery designer, a customer support consultant, a enterprise proprietor, a delivery specialist and an e-commerce skilled. 5 years in the past, a completely totally different set of descriptors would have been used to explain a South Carolina lady who helped a buddy run her enterprise and labored fulltime as a particular schooling interventionist for pre schoolers.

It is just a few years later and some states over, however Parks Stated the overhaul of her dwelling, household and work life has remodeled her mindset, given her a inventive outlet and pushed her to personal her goals.

“I beloved instructing, I beloved the children and the households, but it surely simply wasn’t for me,” Parks stated. “I cared a lot and was at all times overwhelmed with guilt that I wasn’t doing sufficient … This enterprise was an escape. I regarded ahead to coming dwelling and doing it, I discovered it therapeutic.”

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Parks began Miss Lou Makes as a house décor enterprise in Charleston in 2017. It wasn’t till a number of years later that she moved to Plymouth and one other 12 months after that earlier than a COVID-related furlough pushed her into the enterprise full time. By then, she’d largely modified her product providing and was beginning to specialise in selfmade beaded bracelets.

“As soon as I began jewellery, I simply by no means stopped,” she stated. “It gave me again a chunk of who I used to be once I was a child. It unlocked part of me I might forgotten about.”

After a 12 months of furlough, she give up her job to speculate extra money into provides, extra time into making jewellery at dwelling and extra time away from her household to promote her wares at markets and vendor gala’s. As soon as she took the enterprise full time, she began pitching to shops and now has a number of wholesale shoppers, together with Kia Maria by the Sea in Sandwich and Sprezzatura Boutique in Plymouth. Two years in the past, she was making 10 bracelets per week. Now, she’s as much as about 100.

All the things bought by Miss Lou Makes is made by Parks in her small beach-town cottage in Plymouth whereas her two younger youngsters are napping or down for the night time. The dear few hours of solitude are how she makes the jewellery, posts to social media, solutions emails, updates her web site and fills orders from her Etsy retailer.

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“I like colours and I like texture. It is tremendous necessary to me with jewellery,” she stated. “I prefer to construct bracelet stacks and I like them to have totally different colours, patterns and supplies … With jewellery and artwork, it is all about what you are drawn to. I am all about connection and experiencing it in new methods. No matter calls to you, it was meant to be.”

A few of her items are understated with impartial tones, and others are brightly coloured with tassels and stand-out beads. Her splendid buyer? Somebody with a “funky model.”

“Someone who is not afraid to combine colours or patterns or metals. Somebody who simply needs to have enjoyable with their equipment, experiment and never take it too severely,” Parks stated.

Regardless of leaving her job in instructing, Parks hasn’t stopped giving again. She at the moment has a number of bracelets that give again to native charities. One, which includes a turtle-shaped bead, advantages the Nationwide Marine Life Middle on Cape Cod and a bracelet that claims “help native babes” provides to a corporation that works to place female hygiene merchandise in faculties.

“It is OK to not get caught,” she stated. “My happiness is in any respect all time excessive, and my stress stage is at an all time low. You possibly can’t argue with that.”

Uniquely Native is a collection of tales by Mary Whitfill highlighting the South Shore’s farmers, bakers and makers. Have a narrative concept? Attain Mary at [email protected].