EDITOR’S NOTE: Whether they’re selling handmade crafts, doing consulting after hours, or operating a weekend catering business, side-hustles are meant to provide extra coin beyond what a regular day job pays. For many, it’s a way to turn their passions into profit. In 2017, according to CNN Money, 44 million Americans reported having a side-hustle to either pursue a passion or supplement their income, or both.
Here is one in a series of stories from Northeast Ohio:
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio – By day, Marie McGlathery is a school psychologist, working with kindergarteners through fifth graders at Grant Elementary School in Willoughby.
In the evenings and at weekend craft shows, she’s the owner of and artistic mind behind Paper Planet Wearables, the jewelry business that’s helping her pay down debt, save up to buy a house and fund her other extracurricular passion – competitive figure skating.
McGlathery, 37, makes colorful, one-of-a-kind necklaces, earrings and bracelets in her studio at the Brecksville house she rents with her wife, Kelly, and their rescue dog, Xena. Though she buys pendants and other accent pieces to weave into her bijoux, the pieces largely consist of handcrafted paper beads, rolled from junk mail, coffee-cup sleeves and cast-off paper coated with acrylic for longevity and water-resistance.
“No paper is safe around me,” said McGlathery, who estimates that she has 5,000 to 6,000 paper beads stockpiled in her studio at any given time.
Marie McGlathery holds colorful beads made from cast-off paper and coated with water-resistant acrylic. Any any given time, she has thousands of beads in her home studio.The Plain Dealer
Paper Planet Wearables started as an artistic experiment in 2009 and has grown into a side-hustle not only for McGlathery but also for her parents.
Her father, Toney, forms beads out of wedges of paper in off hours from his part-time job at Marc’s discount-store chain. Her mother, Linda, has a full-time job in medical billing but strings beads and makes jewelry-hanging cards, tags, care sheets and bags on the side.
“If you went back in time … and you told me that I would make what I make today with this jewelry company and that it would become what it has become, I would never have believed you,” McGlathery said. “I had absolutely no idea. I still don’t believe it, really.”
Most of her pieces sell for $5 to $20, with a few priced up to $40.
A stack of bracelets shows the multitude of colors that Marie McGlathery pulls from paper that otherwise would go to waste.The Plain Dealer
McGlathery has tried maintaining a website and an online store, but she found that e-commerce required too much of her time. And she’s not hurting for shoppers between the 30 art festivals she participates in each year, her loyal Facebook followers and her one-weekend online holiday sale, which took place in early December.
She won’t reveal precise numbers, but the jewelry business accounts for a quarter or so of her annual income. It’s more than an artistic pursuit. It’s a 25-to-30-hour-a-week profession.
“I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t financially beneficial, to be honest,” she said. “If it was just a hobby, I probably wouldn’t do it.”
Marie McGlathery sells her earrings, bracelets and necklaces at art fairs and craft shows. She maintains a Facebook page but doesn't have an e-commerce site.The Plain Dealer
It’s fair to say that McGlathery’s path to entrepreneurship was a bit unconventional.
A New Jersey native and teenage transplant to the Buckeye State, she moved to Alaska after high school to study marine biology. During a two-year stint there, she learned to paint on silk – and tagged salmon hatchlings for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Then she hopped to Florida, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine art and worked odd jobs, shepherding theme-park patrons onto rides at Universal Studios and Walt Disney World and dressing as a turtle mascot at a resort. At one point, she made the waitlist to dress up as Tigger, the rambunctious tiger from Winnie the Pooh.
Eventually, she landed work as an inside sales representative for an electronics company and found her way back to Ohio. She studied counseling and art therapy at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, where she first tried her hand at making foil beads, before enrolling in a master’s program for school psychology at Cleveland State University.
Since graduating, she’s worked for schools in Parma, Cleveland and now Willoughby, in what she describes as a stressful but rewarding job where “I must get 15 hugs a day.”
Marie McGlathery inspects her inventory of earrings at her home studio.The Plain Dealer
Her fledgling jewelry business enabled her to complete the last chapter of her 12-year-long college education. Now it’s helping her make payments on student loans, cover the cost of ice time and training for skating contests, budget for a house purchase that’s likely two to three years away and consider longer-term goals, including her desire to get a doctorate by age 50.
“Paper Planet is the thing that, luckily, … is going to get me there,” she said.