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

Sarah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I’ve always had a strong pull toward creating, whether DIY projects or art pieces. While I enjoy learning new art forms and using many different mediums, it wasn’t until 2022 that I discovered my love for making jewelry. Once I got to a point in my skills where I was happy with the results, I began wearing my handmade earrings in public, to work, and around family. I started giving earrings as gifts, making sales, and receiving custom orders for earrings, including a custom-individualized order for a bridal party. After selling solely in-person and on Instagram for six months to a year, the number of inquiries for “Where can I buy your earrings?” encouraged me to create an official site to share the beauty and stories behind the pieces God has enabled me to create.

While I’m still building a client base, launching my site has increased my sales and professionalism and also broadened the potential to share my art and products with anyone who may ask, “Where did you get your earrings??” As I interact with boutiques, my website remains the primary platform owners look through to determine if my styles will fit their clientele.

This move up has helped prevent me from keeping this passion as just a costly hobby. Right now, I’m closer to breaking even. Still, I pray for God to open up new opportunities to grow my business, such as boutique clients and new customers, to help support our family (with my loving husband) through this creative passion.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As you know, my name is Sarah. I’m an artist, a musician, a mom, a wife, and a Christian. My business name, “913onCanvas,” can be broken down as me (my birthday is September 13 or 9.13), creating on all types of canvas. As I say it, “Nine One Three on Canvas.”

As I mentioned, it wasn’t until 2022 that I discovered my love for making jewelry. After the birth of our daughter in 2020, my time to create became more limited. While I still enjoy creating in various art forms, the projects I previously leaned toward required more focused time within one sitting. Because our beautiful, comedic daughter was born with Down Syndrome, she needs a bit more of our assistance and undivided attention during this season, limiting the time spent at my art tables, so discovering the art of polymer clay jewelry and becoming an expert in the making-process has become a joy and a peaceful retreat full of inspiration (even if only for 30 minutes during a nap). I can typically accomplish at least one step in the earring-making process each time I work in my art room, so this art form provides a feeling of accomplishment each step of the way.

Between a fulfilling full-time job and a loving family to invest in, this art form has been a blessing. I’ve even walked through the first few steps of earring-making with our daughter using her playdough.

I design and sell earrings I’ve handmade primarily from polymer clay and UV resin. These earrings are lightweight with upscale designs and unique from most stores. I also take custom orders (think custom bridal party gifts, mommy-and-me pairs, or the perfect earring color combo and design to go with your favorite outfit). Custom orders often help me think outside the box and increase my skills.

I also create large and small illustrations with accents of watercolor and Linocut (hand-cut stamps) from my hand-drawn illustrations. These stamps are inked and pressed on paper with additions of unique watercolor or block print ink backdrops which can be framed and hung as beautiful wall art. These hand-cut stamps can also be used to add designs to the polymer clay earrings, so many art forms overlap and add to the uniqueness of what I can create.

My husband and I also make wooden coasters that we can customize through laser engraving. Custom orders have included military families (locations they’ve lived in), personalized with last names, or single words of value (love, joy, peace, family).

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

I can attribute much of my skill to YouTube videos, Instagram posts/videos/reels, and to other makers on Instagram (CreoClay, Squigglecutters, and others) who are so kind to respond, share what they’ve learned, and provide tips to improve. Some of these makers sell clay cutters and tools that I use, so they are valuable resources in many ways.

I aim to continuously improve, document my processes, and increase efficiency so that products remain unique and high quality. I pray someday I might have my daughter join me in creating for 913onCanvas as she gets older and shows increased interest.

Only by God’s grace do I have the skills to create, and I’m in awe every time I successfully finish creating a beautiful product. It reminds me that I can only create an ounce of beauty because He is the creator and made me to create in His image. That may sound preachy, but it’s the reality of my process: genuine awe and thankfulness to God. (Also, I’m so thankful for my husband, who supports me in this business and passion.)

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

Many people ask if I sell my earrings on Etsy. The simple answer is no. After selling many custom coaster sets on Etsy, I struggled to determine the fees that would be assessed because there are quite a few depending on how quickly an item sells.

After some comparison research, I decided to use Squarespace for my new website, which launched in November 2022, because I could list unlimited products, create a beautiful, customizable layout, and update it as often as needed. Among other things, Squarespace also has a helpful commerce integration for stock, tax calculations, and shipping labels. The mobile app doesn’t work well for customizing the site, and it can be slightly challenging to navigate the web-editing features, but in my current season with 913onCanvas, the pros outweigh the cons. I’m always open to feedback and am grateful for all my friends and customers who continue to help 913onCanvas succeed!

Contact Info:

• Website: 913oncanvas.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/913onCanvas
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@913oncanvas

Image Credits
Sarah Murphy (Self)