These days it is trendy to be a tough chick and wear jewelry, but Cheri was a pioneer of authentic grit meets girl. Not only was she a firefighter, but she also spent 6 years working as a heavy equipment operator in Antarctica! Ironically, it was there that she started selling her jewelry to her fellow "Ice" friends. They had an Art Show there every season, and after she made $2000 in her first one, she was hooked! She very quickly realized that it was ok to be tough AND pretty!! Her jewelry business was born on the Ice in 2001, shortly after 9/11. She would spend hours daydreaming new beading designs and color combinations while operating a D-7 or a Cat 950G on the cold and unforgiving sea ice in McMurdo Sound, or on the vast plain of the South Pole. It's amazing where the mind can go, in terms of creativity, when surrounded by nothing but WHITE. Cheri Taliaferro has been handcrafting jewelry for 30+ years, and started her jewelry business in 2001. Her jewelry focuses on gritty gals who work hard, and are super tough, but also want to look and feel pretty. Gals like herself who wear Carhartts or Wranglers to work and end most days covered in dirt, mud or manure! Cheri spent 12 years as a firefighter for the USFS - 6 as a Hotshot and 6 as a Smokejumper. She knows what it means to work hard and be strong! And yet she still wanted to feel feminine and pretty. It was a strange in-between place, of feeling too "girly" for the mainly male-dominated jobs she had chosen, and yet too much of a "tomboy" for the girls outside of her jobs. She never quite fit in. And for many of her early years in her jewelry business she didn't really know how to classify her pieces and market them. She felt a little bit awkward .... like, how could she (a firefighter and heavy equipment operator) legitimately sell pretty jewelry? Cheri has been working on her "memoir" of her exciting life as a firefighter, a heavy equipment operator, a mountaineer, and a world traveler, and plans to publish her work very soon. For now, she is focused on her Beading and Jewelry Process Journals, and is excited to put something out into the world that can help her fellow creatives, especially as it pertains to jewelry making. Cheers!
