About Kristen Hubert: A Creative Business Owner’s Story
I’m Kristen and I run Upcycle My Stuff.
I’m passionate about upcycling and I want to help you feel that way too.
I’m also passionate about small businesses and the difference that running one can make in people’s lives.
I am a small business owner myself – in fact I’ve run several different types over the years!
The Day Job and the Side Hustle
Before I ditched the day job to follow my passions I worked in local government and the voluntary sector.
I set up and ran a project that trained local government officers to encourage people to make use of their empty homes (ones that had been left to go to rack and ruin for a whole range of reasons – there are more of them out there than you think!).
I liked it but there was a frustration element that came along with working inside and with government bureaucracies and of course the grind of commuting into an office day in and day out and not feeling like there was enough time to pursue my own passions.
That was the day job. At the same time I had an upcycling side hustle called Hairlooms Headpieces – making one of a kind bridal headpieces upcycled from vintage jewellery.
It was a great creative outlet and I had the privilege of being part of one of the most memorable days in my customer’s lives. It was so lovely to make something for them that I know they would treasure and possibly even pass down to their kids!
Life gets in the way
My side hustle was going from strength to strength and I was getting busier with it and then I got hit with a personal bombshell. My Father and my Grandmother died within 6 days of each other.
My Dad had cancer for several years and frankly focusing on the business had helped me cope by taking my mind off of it. But despite his illness both deaths came pretty out of the blue and knocked me for six. I went into a bit of a spiral and shut down the business.
It was a dark time, and I just couldn’t find the positive in focusing on my business anymore. But in a funny way upcycling helped me through it.
Upcycling is the Best Medicine
Like many people who have fallen in love with upcycling, crafting or DIY, I have always found that the physical act of transforming something from what it was, unwanted or unused, into something useful, beautiful and cherished has a real uplifting effect on the soul.
Of course, you should reach out to friends and family when you are feeling low, but I truly believe that sometimes upcycling is the best medicine!
Whatever project you are undertaking becomes a bit of a metaphor for whatever you are going through at the time – if you can bring that old ugly side table back to life with a coat of paint what could you change in your own life?
I did a lot of revamping tables and reupholstering, skip rescuing and many other projects to give me somewhere to escape to as I healed from the trauma of losing two of the biggest figures in my life.
Ditching the Day Job
When I started to emerge the other side I didn’t restart my business, that chapter felt closed for me. But I did decide to have children, something I’d been scared of for years.
I now have two boys and they’ve completely changed my life.
I decided I couldn’t go back to work and put them in childcare so I started another business.
I did what I don’t recommend to others which was to jack in the day job before I had a steady income from the new business!
Thankfully it worked out. For several years I ran a successful Baby Gifts brand called Nested Fox.
We sold gender neutral keepsake gifts and nursery décor across Europe and North America – mostly through online outlets like Amazon, Etsy and our own E-Commerce store.
How did I know how to set something like this up? I didn’t is the short answer.
I found the idea to run this sort of business from a blog post that emphasised the flexibility of being able to do it all at home and outside 9-5 hours. Perfect for fitting around raising my babies.
Over the months before I actually took the leap I researched like a mad thing, learning and reading about designing and sourcing products and selling online on channels like Amazon.
This was a different beast to my little side hustle wedding headpiece business, this was product research & design, branding and trademark registrations, sourcing manufacturers, managing quality control and importing. And this was not upcycling!
I did also think – some of this info would have been so helpful when I was running my previous business! – but I’ll get back to that….
Upcycling is my Superpower
But, you are probably confused at this point because this business I’ve been describing has nothing to do with upcycling!
It definitely doesn’t, so I needed an outlet for that, which is where Upcycle My Stuff comes in.
I started the blog on a whim when my second son was 4 months old. I needed somewhere to get creative again!
I wasn’t really sure exactly what it would all be about – but I knew I personally was fed up with clicking on to websites promising me I would learn how to upcycle something and then finding it was just an image with no instructions, no link to a tutorial, nothing. So frustrating!
So I wanted a site full of tutorials and instructions, and when I put up an inspiration piece with lots of other people’s great upcycling ideas, I wanted to make sure you could click through to the tutorial so my readers weren’t left the same way I was saying ‘great idea – but how do I do it?’.
Don’t try to do it alone!
I knew I couldn’t write all the tutorials myself. I’m just not an expert in upcycling everything – who could be?
So I reached out to lots of fab small upcycling businesses and invited them to contribute and lots of them did!
These small business owners are truly experts in their fields so I was super excited to feature them and at the same time give them some exposure for their businesses.
Bringing Ecommerce secrets to handmade Upcycling businesses!
Along with showcasing upcycling businesses that are already established I feel like my experience in the online ecommerce space could be really useful for new and emerging small business owners who sell handmade and upcycled products or provide an upcycling service (like upholstery or furniture painting).
There is a lot of what I learned to start my baby gifts business that is not applicable to this kind of business – namely manufacturing and importing – but there is so much that craft businesses and other skills based handmade businesses could be leveraging!
There is no need for upcycling businesses to limit themselves to craft fairs and local shops. There is a whole industry of tricks and tools that help small business owners who sell mass produced items to get ahead – why not steal some of those tricks for businesses who make their products through upcycling?
There are so many opportunities and resources out there and I would like to help show the way.
So along with crafty tutorials for everyone on Upcycle My Stuff you will find tips & tricks for starting your own upcycling based craft business too.
I also have a free quick start guide to starting your own upcycling business.
Another Twist
Like everyone else in the world covid and lockdowns threw me for a loop in 2020 and it saw the start of another chapter in my entrepreneurial life.
To distract myself from the chaos of the time I tried out quilting….and got seriously hooked!
In the years since, I’ve closed up my baby gifts brand, started a new blog and a YouTube Channel – Scrap Fabric Love – and spend most of my time stitching.
I especially love making quilts out of old jeans & sheets. I’ve also become just a little bit obsessed with buying up and using other people’s quilting leftovers – their fabric scraps!
Lets Connect!
If you aren’t already do subscribe to my newsletter to stay up to date with all my latest posts.
If you are curious about quilting – especially with reclaimed materials – check out Scrap Fabric Love and connect with me there too!
I even have a fun online quilting community called Scrap Club which you can check out here.
Feel free to send me an email at [email protected]
Happy Upcycling!
x Kristen