JAIME JAY HANDMADE

WORDS Tara Crutchfield PHOTOGRAPH Amy Sexson

Jaime Jackson is in the business of telling stories. Not through books or songs or poems, but through the wearable art she makes by hand and sells at local markets. She crafts colorful crocheted pieces and handmade jewelry full-time now, but it took many years of hard work to get here.

A wearable artist for her business Jaime Jay Handmade, she and her husband Eddie and their daughters Juliana and Jalah live in Lakeland. Eddie is the frontman for Fire Light Reggae and a fourth-grade math and science teacher. “If you’re an artist, you need someone to cheer you on,” she said of husband Eddie. “I see the good and brilliance in him when he’s feeling low, and he sees the good and brilliance in me when I’m feeling low.”

The couple cultivates creativity at home, encouraging their daughters to explore outlets that interest them. Youngest daughter Jalah is creative with makeup, nail polish, hair color, and accessories. She is also known to curate a mean music playlist. Older daughter Juliana is an anime artist who knits, crochets, and plays the violin.

CREATE, CROCHET, REPEAT

Jaime Jackson grew up in a small New England dairy cow town. “I remember being in first grade and being in the Brownies and the Girl Scouts and doing craft time, and that being my favorite thing. She would often craft with her grandmother too. “She taught me how to crochet and knit and sew,” said Jackson.

She described her Nonna as “a typical Italian grandmother” who made crafts out of even the smallest things. “She never looked at a bottle of bleach that she didn’t have to cut apart and make into something,” Jackson smiled.

The first time she was paid to make something was friendship bracelets when she was twelve. She quickly moved from her first love of weaving to making other jewelry. She was selling a few pieces here and there by high school and making them for friends and family as gifts. “I always used selling my artwork as a way to get the extras in life,” she said.

In her teens, she decided she wanted to get out of that small town. She would venture to the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to go to museums and teen clubs. At 18, she enrolled in community college, moved out, and got an apartment of her own. She worked at a restaurant, a bead store, and sold the jewelry she made to support herself. “I never stopped hustling from that moment – from the moment I moved out,” she said.

She met her husband, Eddie, and the two worked together to make ends meet. “I had this peaceful, tranquil childhood, but then my young adulthood was running to keep the lights on, to keep the heat on. It was hard,” she said.

The strain of working to make ends meet and attending college became too great, and Jackson eventually dropped out of school. After a tough winter during which the couple struggled “to heat our apartment that we hated living in, in a neighborhood we didn’t enjoy,” Jaime thought, “That’s it. I’m done.” The couple traveled around the east coast, keeping Central Florida in mind as a destination because her grandparents lived in Winter Haven.

The Jacksons settled in Lakeland in 2004. Jaime loved the area’s parks and open spaces. “It seemed perfect like everything was idyllic here,” she said. “Compared to working two full-time jobs each just to pay the rent [in Connecticut].” Life was looking up for the young couple – well, except for all the hurricanes.

“We fell in love with it here. I liked the feeling of not quite fitting in and being challenged,” she said. Coming from a place back home where she had an extensive community network, Jaime liked the feeling of being the new kid in town. “I felt like I could dig in and maybe throw my energy towards a place where it was at a tipping point.” She and Eddie liked the prospect of ‘making the community you want to be in.’

JAIME JAY TAKES FLIGHT

“I had to keep crossing new thresholds before I found myself with the time and space to focus just on my business,” said Jackson. She got her nickname and now business name, Jaime Jay (for Jackson), when she worked for Hobby Lobby for eight years. “I started there during the economic downturn when there were no jobs to be had. I waited in line, three different days, for two hours a day to be interviewed. I kept coming back because I really needed a job,” she said.

She landed the position, all the while finding time for her art, even bringing supplies to work with her to crochet during breaks.

A turning point for Jackson was when she got passed up for a promotion. “I was told it would be better if I didn’t try to get a promotion there because I had a family to take care of.” The job was given to a man instead. That was her sign that working in corporate retail was not a fit for her life. She and Eddie sat down and came up with a long-term plan. He wanted to go back to college for a teaching degree, and she wanted to create and sell her art.

As soon as Eddie got his degree, he began teaching mid-way through the school year in 2019. At the end of that school year, on her daughters’ last day of school and Eddie’s last day teaching for the year, she quit her job at Hobby Lobby. She was ready to take flight with Jaime Jay Handmade. The name came not only from her nickname, but she began noticing all the birds in her backyard bird feeder and liked the symbolism. Jaime Jay was a name she felt connected to.

She planned to teach craft classes and sell jewelry initially. The family converted their back porch into an airy studio with two walls of windows and double doors opening to their dining room. “It’s a quiet, colorful room in our house where people go and have conversations and sit down and relax,” she said. She spends most of her time in the studio. “It looks out into the backyard. I get to watch the birds and the trees and the sky. It’s everything I wanted.”

Jackson invited friends and family to a studio opening to make crafts and jewelry, and she sold some of her work. Next, she began planning to open her studio for classes the following spring. She worked diligently on a menu of classes teaching how to make jewelry and wearable art like scarves and shawls. She even collected sewing machines for her future students. By February 2020, she knew her March open house party had to be canceled as news of the pandemic became grimmer.

“Then we existed for the rest of the school year,” she said. With three students and a teacher doing classes from home, she stopped working on Jaime Jay Handmade. In the summer, she connected with DJ and producer Deek Beats on Instagram. He was planning the first Park Chill event, a night with hip-hop and lo-fi beats, food, and vendors. She asked if she and her family could attend. Deek Beats asked if she’d rather sell her art as a vendor there instead.

“He convinced me to do it, and I bought a tent, borrowed some tables from my mom and some sheets from the closet, and took all the table lamps from around the house and plugged them in and did my first market.”

She attended more Park Chill events, Dixieland Market, First Friday in Lakeland, and Buena Market. “I was learning as I went,” she said. These markets helped her hone in her display and market setup. “Less is more,” she said.

Then she started at the Winter Haven Farmers Market. “The Winter Haven Farmers Market was when I started thinking about it professionally,” she said. “I consider that to be my home base. It’s a place where we all know each other. It’s comfortable. I have a lot of repeat customers and people who know me that pop in. That’s my favorite location.”

“The market community, the vendor community – those are my people,” said Jackson. “It’s community over competition, but we all do better if we’re all together.”

WEARABLE ART & CROCHET CLASSES

When Jackson creates a piece of wearable art, she pictures a story. Sometimes it’s about someone she knows and how they might feel wearing it, even if it isn’t for them specifically. “The idea is that when you buy something that I make, you put it on, and it gives you a certain kind of feeling – whatever that is for you. It’s your story. When we wear something, it makes us feel a certain way, just like when we decorate our house and put up art. We look at that art, and it makes us feel a certain way, or we sit in that chair, we feel a certain way. […] My concept is to make a fairy tale or story that people can wear.”

Connected to the reasons we wear things, Jackson said, “When I do research for a new collection, it eventually comes to the ‘why?’” Since starting her business, clients have asked for more rocks, minerals, and crystals in her work. She thinks of why people might gravitate towards those things. “Maybe in terms of chaos, something natural is more peaceful.”

This summer, her goal is to get her website up and running with pieces available for sale there. Jaime Jay is heading in another exciting direction – teaching classes. What she wanted to do from the beginning, she plans to offer beginner classes, granny square classes, and advanced classes as her students progress. She will provide the hooks and yarn, which students can take home. “The most important thing when you learn a new skill is to practice it,” she said. Classes will be announced on social media.

“I like introducing people to something artistic and creative,” Jackson said. “Everyone has a little spark of something in there. You just have to find the thing that matches you. […] I can’t draw at all. When I was a kid, I did not think I was artistic, and I’m a living working artist now. [...] I thought I was ‘crafty.’ It’s the same thing. It’s just belittled because it’s ‘women’s work.’ But it’s not – it’s punk rock and cool.”

Jaime Jay Handmade items can be purchased through Instagram or any of the markets she attends, like Buena Market in Lakeland or the Bloom on Franklin Block Party in Tampa. She is at the Winter Haven Farmers Market the first Saturday of every month and announces on social media where else she will be.

Jaime Jay Handmade IG @jaimejay863 jaime.jay863@gmail.com