Vintage charms

Costa Mesa native Chelsea Burggren has been making jewelry for her girlfriends since she was in high school.

But it never seemed like the right time for her to make a serious business out of it till now. Burggren, 31, launched her Stone Fox Designs on Thursday night at a trunk show at Costa Mesa’s Goat Boutique, and she’s excited for her necklaces and earrings to catch the eye of Newport-Mesa residents.

“I tried selling before, but with my full-time design job, it was hard,” Burggren said in her Costa Mesa home office as she hung necklaces from a closet covered in chocolate-brown corkboard.

Now with the help of a partner and her fiancee, she had a successful launch at Goat.

“Almost everyone who came bought something,” Goat owner Christina Smith said, adding that she didn’t know how much jewelry was sold.

Smith thinks Burggren’s designs will be popular among women because of their simplicity.

Many of the necklaces have a single pendant, gem or stone with simple chains. The majority of the earrings are silver and gold chains or vintage stones.

“I think it’s been so junky for a while [that] people are looking to really clean it up and wear one really great piece,” Smith said.

She spends a lot of time shopping at swap meets, vintage expos and bead fairs to find the stones she uses in her pieces. Because there’s just about always some vintage component in her pieces, it makes them more special, she said.

“You just have to really hunt,” Burggren said. “It’s tough, it’s like the total hunt, but I love it.”

Burggren has so far enjoyed the complete creative voice she’s able to project on her own pieces — she finds and buys every component herself and makes all the pieces by hand.

She started in the fashion industry as a receptionist for Volcom and was catapulted into a designer position after showing sketches she made to her boss.

She was instrumental in creating Volcom’s girls’ line and works as a full-time designer for Ezekiel Clothing.

“I’m glad I’m doing this now because now I’m ready,” she said, adding that if she had tried to launch Stone Fox before it may have not been as positive of an experience.

“It’s a cool time to start,” she said. “It feels like it’s a good thing with the fashions of today and everything.”

She plans to keep her designs at Goat Boutique and has been looking at other local shops to sell in. Eventually, she would be willing to expand that.

“I’m just trying to build my local clientele now,” she said.

Now Burggren is concentrating on developing a website and looking forward to the future of Stone Fox Designs.