We had the good fortune of connecting with Erika Pinkley and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Erika, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I didn’t set out to have this business at all. Initially I started my glassing journey as an homage to my mom, a way to creatively decorate our new-build home, and lastly as a way to keep me busy during the covid lockdown. I was simply sharing my journey online and after the instillation of the 13 panels in my house I became bombarded with requests for custom orders. Next thing you know I was creating a business name, logo, and then taking them down to the courthouse to register a new business!
Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I am a self taught stained glass artist (Thank you Youtube!). I take traditional quilt block designs and create them out of glass & lead and it’s all thanks to my late mother. We lost her to pancreatic cancer a year before the pandemic hit. Just after we lost her my husband and I started the construction to build our forever home. During that time I had run across one of her old lesson plans from hen she used to teach quilting classes to eager young students. One of her favorite beginners classes to teach was sampler quilts. While I was thumbing through the pagers something hit .. what if I could take her quilt block designs and make them out of stained glass for our new home?
Well, many many days/weeks later of endless research later, I purchased a starter kit on line and began breaking glass (on purpose!).
The rest is history!
Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I was born& raised in San Antonio, Texas and the best place by far to take anyone is downtown to the Alamo and our beautiful River Walk! I’ve been playing tour guide to my friends and family for years and it’s always been the same. We park under the Tower of Americas. Walk down under the convention Center to the the River Walk mall where right outside of of the exits to the mall is the Alamo. From there you cross the street, go down the stairs to walk under the hotel and bam! There’s the River Walk! It doesn’t matter if we go left or right from there because each way is and adventure full of beautiful sighs, trees, stores and oodles of various restaurants!
I’ve been doing this same excursion for years and now matter how you look at it, we can walk for 4-6 hours total and never spread out beyond a 2 mile radius!
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This might be a little bit cliche but my shoutout goes to my entire social platform friends, or rather, my family. My newly found Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok community has provided me with more love & support than I could have ever imagined. When you start a new page and only have that one friend follower on day one, it’s something amazing to watch the numbers grow as well as new blossoming relationships. I think one of the reasons that I’ve had such good luck on the platforms is that I don’t always just talk shop. My followers get to see the artist behind the glass and for some reason they love me back!
Website: www.littleglassquilts.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littleglassquilts/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littleglassquilts
Other: TikTok (my biggest platform with almost 14k followers: https://www.ticktok.com/littleglassquilts