My Start in Art

Hi!  My name is Lisa Rippingale. Thank you so much for stopping by and taking an interest in my jewelry!  Let me tell you a little about myseIf.

I started my career when I was very small. I blame my parents.

My dad is an electronic engineer and when I was little, I would go to visit him at work. They had this huge stand with all these colored wires on it that they would pull wire from for all the different instruments they designed. Dad would go and gather a bunch of different colored wires for me to make jewelry with so that he could get some work done. I moved on to dissecting the costume jewelry my parents bought me and putting it back together in different ways.

My mother is also an artist. She was always home with us, but being a stay-at-home mom gave her some time to herself while my brother and I were in school. She would paint, draw, and sew while we were at school, and on the weekends, she would take us with her to her art shows to sell her art work. She also had lots of art friends, and some of them gave me art lessons. My mom was a huge art influence, and I haven’t given her enough credit for it. Thanks, Mom!

I figure that making jewelry is the perfect combination of the science from my dad and the art from my mom. There is a lot more science involved in jewelry-making than in any other art field. And that was how I got my start!

 I went to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA where I received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree. Then I got a job with a jewelry repair company in Richmond, which definitely furthered my education. I started my own business when my youngest child started kindergarten. I’ve been doing it ever since! 

 I had been making my jewelry ever since I got out of college, but my business really got going when we lived in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. That’s where my business name came from. I named it after my kids because it seems like their toes were ALWAYS sandy! We lived in the Outer Banks for five years, then moved back to Glen Allen. But now I'm back! During the pandemic, I moved back to the beach and I currently live in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Gosh,  I missed the beach!