We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenna Rose a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jenna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Before getting into Stained glass art, I was a very successful hairstylist for 16 years in multiple different states, it was my whole identity, I loved making people feel good and look beautiful. Somewhere along the last year, post covid times, and with my most recent move to Florida my love and passion for hair had died. I presented myself on social media as GOODGOODJENNAROSE – Good hair, Good vibes, and while the hair was still damn good, the vibes were not. I had started looking for ways to be creative and GONEBAD was born. Glass was everything hair was not; it was hard, strict, with no room for flexibility. Inanimate, and required a patience id never practiced, the only similarity was the amount of cuts I got in the beginning comparable to picking up shears and learning how to layer hair for the first time. It was my personal rebellion against everything I did to be creative in my day to day.

Jenna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

For as long as I can remember. Art has always been something incredibly prevalent in my life from early on. My earliest memories are making paper mache bowls, cheesecloth ghosts, and reindeer hand print tshirts with my mom.

My dad was an Incredible artist. We used to call him a photo copy machine. he would draw sports players with such accuracy and Implore us to draw the same ones – where he would then drag us along to car dealerships to get said photos signed by the players. Art was always a means to stay busy, keep our brains and hands moving and my brothers and I loved it.

By 13 I had formed an interest in hair, and by 15 was cutting and coloring friends hair in my backyard. I ended up taking that route for a career and was a very successful stylist for 16 years. I explored all routes of employment with that career and eventually ran my own buisness.

After a recent move to Florida, my love for hair completely died and I found myself looking for other creative outlets, and a way to keep myself busy to avoid drinking too much wine. I started by making things that felt fun, one of them being a recreation of a goofy portrait of my dog Badger where she had two tennis balls and a stick in her mouth. It got the attention of some fellow dog loving friends of mine who asked if I’d make one of their dog and the next thing I knew I had so many orders that I was able to step fully step away from being a stylist and fully focus on this thing that brings me more joy than anything has in a very long time.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced from turning this into a full time buisness is the amount of time I spend alone now. Coming from such a social working environment to full isolation has been something i’ve had to be mindful of mental state and make sure I’m making an effort to go out into the world and have human interaction. The other struggle is time management, making sure i’m scheduling myself time for lunch and for the gym (I was a competitive powerlifter for 6 years) so making sure I keep those muscles is important too! haha..

All of this to be said, taking the plunge to do full time art was insanely scary, but all that matters when making a big move for your buisness is that you believe in yourself and utilize the tools around you, like free social media marketing, and your friend networks to push yourself to grow.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

With more recently starting up with my buisness, one of the best pieces of advice I recieved from my mentor in regards to having my product presented online was ‘you may not fully know what you’re doing but you need to show that you have your shit together,’ a tough love approach always from that one. So I chose to use shopify and create a streamlined website through Godaddy. A lot of my sales are still done through instagrams direct messages, which I prefer, but the website at least makes it look legit. The biggest downside to Eccomerce for me is the amount of fees that are required;from the monthly fees of website and having the shopify, and the chunk paypal takes out for goods and services.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I have no idea what prompted me to use my quickly dwindling bank account balance that had recently took a big hit after separating from my husband and moving across country from california to florida, to buy a stained glass beginners kit. I was so overwhelmed by the items in the box when it showed up. Grinders, heavy duty pliers, weird plastic sticks, lead. I immediately closed the box and let it sit there for a month while I casually looked for classes on how to actually use all this stuff. Classes were slim to none- it seems like it was a dying art that is quickly having a burst of growth again and the classes that did exist couldn’t handle the new volume. I finally booked one for 3 months out, and because i’m a stubborn and impatient lady, I eventually decided I could just teach myself. My first project, nothing simple mind you, I always seem to try to skip ahead 20 steps and then have to go back and relearn the things I sprinted past, was a murikame lucky cat. This thing has so much solder on it that it’s probably a better paper weight than anthing you’d hang in a window. I instantly fell in love though and devoured every bit of information I could get my hands on, and I kept trying different things and eventually everything clicked. Its a skill I will forever be trying to perfect, but I learn something new with every project. My biggest seller are the dog/cat custom portraits, I pack so much personality and try to nail every color detail obsessively, and they turn out pretty dang cool. second being the tattoo vibe peices, but definitely want to be doing more of those in the future, they just turn out so rad.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gonebadglassworks.com
• Instagram: gonebadglassworks

Image Credits
boston terrier in the kitchen window was taken by a client @jdang Julie Dang