I was in class 8 or 9 I think, and I went shopping with my mom. I saw all these bright shiny sequins on sale and immediately decided I MUST HAVE THEM. So I bought a stupid amount of them (with the help of my ever supportive mom) and proceeded to lock myself in my room and try and create something SUPER AMAZING out of them. What I ultimately made looks quite shoddy when you look at it now…but at the time, I thought I was a design GENIUS! I kept making “jewelry” from these sequins using plastic wire and sequins and superglue pretending they were diamonds and rubies and wire made out of platinum (thank GOD for my hyper active imagination)
One of the earlier designs by funkanatomy-way back in class 9 –
My mom who this "one of a kind set" was given to kept it safely all these years!
I shall call it... Amoeba.
A few years later, I went to Australia after my class 10 board exams (public exams which everyone tells you are a big deal – and if you don’t do well in these exams, you will FAIL at life). I was totally taken in with the fact that my cousins made their own jewelry. (PROPER jewelry … like with BEADS. Not FEVICOL and sequins) Obviously, I wanted in on this so I went bead shopping with my cousins and ended up spending about 250 Australian dollars… and getting a heart attack at the checkout counter. You must understand that as a 14 year old who didn’t get any pocket money on a regular basis and had no steady job – it was a serious blow to my funds.
My sister at the time was studying in the US so I decided to make earrings and give them to her to sell when she went back to uni. Shockingly, people WANTED to buy the stuff I made You must realize, since I was starting out, my designs weren’t all that sexy. As the years went by, I got a little better and my designs got a little more professional and polished.
When I was in my second year of college, I decided to put my jewelry making skills to the test and set up a stall at the yearly Diwali fete – flanked on either side by people bringing suitcases full of factory made things, I felt slightly stupid with four little baskets filled with earrings (which only the previous night seemed like SO MANY). On the verge of a panic attack, my best friend, Oli convinced me things would be alright and we began spreading out the earrings I made (in an effort to make it SEEM like there were loads of them!)
with my trusty helpers!
By the end of the day, I had sold almost everything I had brought along with me along with some of the stuff I had made on the spot. People too were interested in seeing how exactly the earrings were made! Some of them even tried their hand at designing their own earrings! I haven’t looked back ever since.
I LOVED that sense of community I shared with the people who bought my earrings that day, they wanted to know how I made them, where I bought the raw materials from, a load of questions really and I loved every minute of it. What I am trying to do by setting up Funkanatomy is recreate that wonderful vibe and sense of community online.