Friday Finds: plumbeadacious

Meet LeAllyson Meyer of Plum Beadacious in Severance, Colorado.

She has a beautiful shop on Etsy, and I had a chance to catch up with her and ask her a few questions. I think you'll enjoy getting to know her.

Name one thing that not many people know about you.
My parents won the family showcase on the old TV show, The Price is Right, in 1957. We were poor and at that time you entered the contest with post cards by mail and guessed the price of the showcase. My parents won a new "Hillman Minx" convertible car, diamond watches, perfume, and a leather photo album. My parents wanted to go to New York to pick up the prizes. So the family (4 of us) got on a Grayhound bus in St. Louis, MO and traveled to New York. We did a bit of sight seeing, took the new car to Niagara Falls and across into Canada, and came back down through Chicago. I remember purple money in Quebec and people speaking French. I remember riding in the car with the top down, making lunch meat sandwiches, sitting on the grass for a picnic, and wading in Lake Huron. This was a wonderful experience for me. I was seven and my brother was three.

How did you get your start on Etsy?
I discovered Etsy on the internet back in 2006. I had been making handcrafted jewelry for a little over a year. I opened a shop under my name, LeAllyson. In February 2008 I felt the need to come up with something more creative and to open a new shop.

How did you choose your shop name?
I was trying to think of something with the word "bead" in it that had not been used for a domain name. Not an easy thing to do. I just started writing down lots of ideas. Somewhere along the line, I thought of a saying that I thought I heard years ago on TV. No one but me can seem to remember this, but I thought Gomer Pyle would say on Andy Griffith, "Well, that's just plum bodacious!" I have no idea why this popped into my head. It's not like I was watching reruns of Andy Griffith. Anyhow, I thought, why not use "Plum Beadacious". I did a little research and found that plum can mean "extremely desirable" and bodacious can mean "remarkable". So I thought changing the word to beadacious was a fun thing to do.

What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical week day for me starts about 6 am. I get up and get ready for my day job. Before I leave I take a few minutes and sign on to my Etsy and Artfire shops to see if I sold anything. Then I go to work. Even if I sold something, I attend to it once I get home. After supper, I sit down at the computer and renew items, and then post something new if I can. I try to work on making an item or blogging also. I spend most evenings working on my little jewelry business. I do most of my photos on the weekend in my bedroom by the east window. I get good light there.

You can also find plumbeadacious on her website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Artfire.