We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erika Pinkley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erika below.

Erika, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the best or worst investment you’ve made (either in terms of time or money)? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)

When talking about this business of mine, I must say that the absolute best investment I ever made was my starter kit. Just the act of purchasing that one high dollar investment was also giving myself the opportunity to take a chance on something new. I had not idea if I was even going to like making stained glass, or if I would even be any good at it, but I did know that I would never find out if I didn’t at least take a chance on myself and just go for it!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

First and foremost I’d like to tell you that I am in fact a needle & thread quilter. My late mother gave me the love of quilting over 30 years ago. She was an avid quilter herself and besides teaching me she spent most of my years teaching beginner quilting classes to eager students. Sadly we lost my mother in 2018 to cancer. About a year after she had passed I came across one of my mothers old lesson plans, and right around that time I was also starting the construction process on my forever home. As the build process marched forward I was inspired to take my mothers lesson plans from her sampler quilt classes and turn those blocks designed for needle & thread and transform them into glass & lead … for 13 of my new windows!
It should be stated here that before taking on this project I had never broken a piece of glass before (at least not on purpose!LOL!). Any-who, 10 months later my house was built and after eons of hours on YouTube university, I had successfully taught myself how to make the 13 desired windows.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

For me, using social media has been the backbone of my business success. When I first started my glassing journey I created a small business page on Facebook & Instagram and posted on them regularly. I would keep my posts almost completely about business but I quickly learned that my followers loved the behind the scenes of my finished projects. They eagerly enjoyed any/all posts of me sharing how my stained glass projects were made so I purposely chose to show photos of the making processes. And for the first year of my journey, those two platforms kept me busy, and then I got onto TikTok. To my surprise I created a large following just by going live and hanging out for hours sharing my creative processes. While there I also share stories, ideas and thoughts on just about everything. Quickly I realized that by just keeping my content relaxed, engaging and real, my followers soon became rabid fans and fast friends! My husband and I often attribute my 21 plus thousand followers there to my relaxed and easy going lives. I make it a point to try and engage all of my viewers and answer all the questions that they might have, no matter how big or small and so now, my followers know that my lives are a fun and educational experience!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Over the past few years as my business has began to grow, a most unexpected thing began to happen; I started creating some of the most rewarding friendships that I never knew I missed. Over the course of my countless hours of lives and hundreds social media posts I began to not only gain a following, I gained some of the most rewarding connections and friendships. In these modern times of social isolation the power of the Internet can not be denied in its measurable capacity to reconnect society if you only let it in.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.littleglassquilts.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littleglassquilts
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littleglassquilts
• Other: TikTok: @littleglassquilts

Image Credits
All images taken by me.