By Hannah Lester
hlester@
opelikaobserver.com

How do you spend your free time? Isabelle Watt spends hers making polymer earrings.

Polymer earrings have become a trend in boutiques and online shops — but Watt wanted to begin making things she wasn’t seeing while shopping. Her sense of style was underrepresented, so she decided to start her own company: Canyon Clay Company.

“The majority of the earnings I make kind of have canyon tones,” she said.

The earrings were only for herself, and for friends, for a while.

“I’ve enjoyed creating things that I find useful for my whole life,” Watt said. “So for a while, I made a lot of watercolor cards that I’d give to friends and family and things like that.”

But one day, while visiting The Well in Opelika, Watt said some of the women noticed and liked her earrings.

“A couple of the girls who worked there saw them asked where I had purchased them, so I started telling them about how I make them and how much I enjoy it and so they were actually the ones who pushed me into selling them,” she said.

Now, Watt sells her earrings in The Well.

The Well is a collaborative space on Avenue A in Opelika that offers everything from food and drink to experiences.

And the kicker of the business is that everything is own and run by women, including the products for sale.

Watt has only been selling her earrings since May.

“I am very self-critical and I am definitely a people-pleaser,” Watt said. “And so that was kind fo my biggest feat when I brought my first batch to The Well, I was like ‘what if people don’t like them and what if they’re not happy with them.’ And so I was really, really worried about that in the beginning. It kind of took a while for me to realize that they’re going to be perfect for some people and not other people’s style. And that’s okay because we’re all different. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

But that hasn’t been a problem, she’s already had to restock several times.

“The first day that I went to restock they had almost sold completely out and I was absolutely blown away,” she said.

Hopefully in the future, Watt will be able to stock in other stores too, she said. Right now, she is working on growing her Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/canyon_clay_co/).

“It’s been interesting taking into account making some that are different styles,” she said. “Because I have a very neutral closet and things like that and so it’s been really fun getting to venture outside of what I might wear on a daily basis.”

The Well is located at 824 Ave. A, Opelika and is open Monday- Sunday (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) Reservations are required outside of walk-in hours after 8 a.m. up to 8 p.m. The Well requests one hour notices ahead of the reservation time.

This is the 13th in a series of articles on the different businesses that are located inside The Well.