Best Home-based Business: ?Heritage Gifts
Published 5:07 pm Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Denise Atkinson’s Heritage Gifts jewelry studio is a space where genealogical magic happens.
“I am a genealogist and went to the University of Washington for the genealogy and family-history program twice,” Atkinson began. “Genealogy and my heritage are really important to me because I grew up with my grandparents and my great grandparents and all their stories.”
Atkinson, a Chicago native who said her heart has always been in Seattle, started her business with 40 pieces of clay jewelry and, once she sold them all, started working with other materials. She crafts traditional and statement pieces, sometimes made from up-cycled materials like spoons and forks found at yard sales, on Craigslist or through trades. Customers also directly bring her sentimental silverware to turn into jewelry for their children, a true testament to the “Heritage” in the store’s name.
“The old saying in Chicago was, ‘Use everything but the squeal,’ because my grandparents were from the old stockyard neighborhood and they never wasted anything. So, I try to come up with different ideas for how to use every piece.”
Atkinson works at Two Rivers School and the Si View Community Center, but she said she started her jewelry business roughly four years ago as part of her five-year plan to try to build a jewelry business while easing into retirement. She said what she hopes people take away from her pieces are simply nostalgia and quality.
“I think people like it when they see it, it brings them back just a little bit,” she stated. “It makes them feel like home, or when they were a kid.”
Atkinson sells her pieces at farmers markets and local businesses like the Black Dog Cafe. She said she’s received a lot of support as a businesswoman and has been invited to be an Artisans for Action at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup this year.
“There’s lots of entrepreneurship (in the Valley),” she stated, mentioning photographer Mary Miller and The Healing Garden Massage Therapy owner Heather Ryan. “I see the community going towards and artsy kind of feel.”
