It's easy to see why Bethany Barkley-Hanson is always in the holiday spirit.
Her booming online store, , offers handcrafted wreaths and wall hangings and showcases many holiday-themed items.
But where did she get her inspiration to become an entrepreneur?
Barkley-Hanson, who lives in Akron, said it was during her undergraduate years living on the Â鶹ӰԺ Campus. She talked about the spark behind the business idea during a recent interview segment with New Day Cleveland on FOX8.
Courtesy FOX8.
"I started making Christmas wreaths when I was living in Clark Hall, and it was just a few wreaths to give as gifts for Christmas since I was a poor college kid," she said. "It involved a lot of hot glue, burnt fingers, and glitter coating absolutely everything in my dorm room; all over my roommate's futon and stuck in the faux fur of her leopard throw pillows (because this was 2001 and my roommate had leopard print everything)."
Humor aside, Barkley-Hanson said her interest in creating beautiful things came from her art history classes.
"My classes with Dr. Medicus and Professor Albert Reischuck opened my eyes to the process of creating art," she recalled. "To just stop and consider, well, how do you paint light? And then to learn about chiaroscuro and look at Caravaggio and be overwhelmed by the beauty of his light and mind-boggled by his shadows and darkness.
"I will never forget Dr. Medicus, not just telling us but showing us slide by slide, Mark Rothko's evolution as an artist. Starting with a slide of a tree he had painted and how that tree and Rothko progressed and grew transforming into his genius abstracts that he is revered for. I suppose you could simply say, that Medicus and Reischuck taught me that beautiful, worthwhile things take time to become what they should be."
Making crafts is one thing, but creating a successful business is an entirely different skill set that Barkley-Hanson said was also helped by her undergraduate instructors.
"I also (took) Micro and Macroeconomics with Sherry Cresswell. At the time, I had little to no confidence in my math skills and definitely was not a 'business' minded student so I was pretty nervous about registering for those classes. But to me, she made the course material not scary, but also enjoyable.
"I took Micro during a summer session so our class was small enough that we got to each do a powerpoint presentation. I forget the exact assignment now but, it was something about the intersection of commerce and marketing. And I did mine on Nike initially signing Michael Jordan because I had always thought how amazing it was that Nike meant nothing before Jordan. Researching Nike and following the Jordan trail for Cresswell's assignment really made me interested in what design and marketing can accomplish together when they are both done well."
Barkley-Hanson said her craft calling stayed with her during her initial working years in health care before she decided to follow her heart and her business sense and open her own shop.