Expressing your own creative ideas can be very liberating. Freshman Ananya Balaji has been expressing her own creative drive with making earrings.
“Firstly, I wasn’t happy with the earrings I had on the market,” Balaji said.
“It didn’t fit me or my style. I got into making my own earrings probably in 6th or 7th grade. I ended up burning a lot of them in the oven, and I learned alot from them. My early designs were not much different. I have more of a way to turn my thoughts into reality.”
As Balaji has been making earrings for a few years now, she plans to turn this into something for others.
“I’m hoping to turn it into a business by the end of this year,” Balaji said.
“I’m trying to differentiate myself from what’s on the market, I’m finding new ways to express myself that others will enjoy. creating other types of jewelry for other people to wear and enjoy.”
Balaji’s engineering teacher Jennifer Kim has seen her creativity flourish.
“I’ve known Ananya since August 2023, so around 6 months,” Kim said.
“She is very creative, especially with her earrings, and very resourceful with them. She is in my engineering class and I have a pair of earrings from her. There were these cubes we had used to build something and I had some old ones that I was getting rid of and Ananya asked if she could have them so I gave them to her and she made earrings out of those cubes.”