27-year-old started a side hustle to get out of her ‘windowless office'—now her business brings in $25,000 a monthIt's Tuesday night, and Liz Chick is in her studio in Brooklyn, New York watching Ella Emhoff — the stepdaughter of U.S. vice president Kamala Harris — teach 20-somethings to do something called knit painting.
She also got abnormally lucky. In 2022, Chick won $50,000 in a sweepstakes drawing she didn't even realize she'd entered, providing the seed money she needed to rent the studio's physical space and launch her business. Without a professional creative outlet, Chick created a personal one. She started dying fabrics, using natural items like avocado pits, onion skins and dried florals. She hosted a pop-up shop in her 12-by-14-foot bedroom, selling dyed beeswax wraps — like saran wrap, but made from wax-coated fabric — to her friends.
After a pop-up event in 2022, she reached a breaking point."I hauled all of my stuff up my fourth-floor walk-up and I was just laughing ridiculously," she says."When I walked into my apartment, my roommate was like, 'What's wrong with you?' I the amount of hours of unpaid labor I had been doing for years."
The funds came in handy when, nine months later, she found her perfect studio space. She started renting it for $2,800 per month in March 2023, subleasing it out while she built a plan for RecCreate Collective.