Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer Ingalls. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jennifer , thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

It’s not easy. A a sole proprietor, you have to do it all! From purchasing and accounting, to the actual creative work. You have to know you industry, and your personal business, inside and out. It’s a lot to juggle.

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.

I have been making jewelry, professionally, for more than 25 years, under the name “Picklepot”. My degree is in silvermithing, thus the business name, and although I still make silver jewelry, my career path got derailed in 2011. The price of silver jumped to almost $50 an ounce, and I couldn’t afford my job! No one was going to buy my work at the price I would need to charge. In my quest to find a way to keep making jewelry, I stumbled into Steampunk. Not where I thought my career was going, but it has been more than than I could have imagined. We all hope that we can love what we do to pay the bills! Fourteen years later, I still love my job!

After having been asked, about ten thousand times, “What is Steampunk?”, my short answer is: “Steampunk is the way the world would be if all those late 19th century speculative fiction authors, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and Mary Shelley, had been right about the future!” We would have dirigibles, mechanical marvels and medical monsters, the world would be powered by steam. We would live in a world where a basic understanding of how things worked would be accessible, and not a world that relied more on microchips than solid state physics.

… and then Covid came along. The gift shops that carried my work were closed, the conventions and craft shows I was used to working, every other weekend, were cancelled.

I was rescued by my partner, who randomly joined a Facebook group of folks who were making their own Vanilla Extracts. She ordered some vanilla beans and started our first 750ml of vanilla extracting. Looking at the large bottle and imagining what we would do with that much vanilla, we decided to sandblast a couple of cute bottles to give away as gifts, She posted a photo of our first bottles on the group’s page, and it exploded! Was I planning to open at Etsy store to sell custom extract bottles? No! That is not a job I ever thought I would have, but it got me through the pandemic, and I have since branched out to steampunk glassware. From wine glasses and coasters to “poison” bottles.

As conventions and shops have reopened, I have been focusing on jewelry again, Steampunk and Sterling, with a little sandblasting on the side. I still love taking apart broken watches and recycling them into something something beautiful and new.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Buy Art! That is the number one thing that you can do to support the arts.
Skip the “big box stores” this holiday season and, instead, check out your local arts associations, crafts shows and studios. Buy gifts at are original, unique, and that have a story behind them.
They will be treasured long after that sweater has been donated to charity, or that gift card has been spent and forgotten.

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

I love when people buy my work as a gift for some one else! It’s a little unnerving, hoping that the recipient of the gift will love it. …but there is nothing quite like having a total stranger walk up to me at a show and say “You! You made my favorite earrings! Best gift ever. I would know your work any where. So glad I finally get to meet you!”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.picklepot.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057402950430
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-ingalls-27054b99/

Image Credits
Jennifer Ingalls