It all started with a 1985 Toyota RV & the Good ol’ Grateful Dead
It’s hard to say exactly where the thriving in tie dye story begins… but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t found the grateful dead & left our jobs to hit the road - so I guess we’ll start there.
My name is Erica and I’m the CEO, artist, marketing director, social media manager & doer of all things here at Thriving in Tie Dye. I started this “brand” as a blog back in 2017 when my husband Tim and I were secretly planning on quitting our jobs and traveling around the country.
In the years leading up to this moment, we had gotten heavily into the Grateful Dead scene and were swept up in the idea of “going on tour “ with Dead & Company and living on the road, as so many deadheads before us had. So in October of 2017, we bought 1985 Toyota Motorhome and just a few weeks later, I was unexpectedly laid off from my corporate job and given a big severance to fund our adventure.
During our 6 months on the road: we traveled 20,000 miles, visited over US 30 states, and went to 13 national parks and countless state parks & national monuments. We met up with friends from the internet, and strangers from all over the world. It was exciting and awakening and more freeing than we ever could have imagined… so when our planned 6 months of travel were coming to an end and our little old RV needed a nice long rest - we felt a strong pull towards figuring out how to make our nomadic lifestyle a more permanent thing.
On our way back home to Connecticut, we rolled into Sedona, AZ and stumbled upon a wire wrapping class. As soon as I finished the class, I was hooked! I sold my very first piece of wire wrapped jewelry on Facebook just a couple days later and opened my Etsy shop on November 22, 2018 with a small variety of wire wrapped pendants.
I continued making and selling wire jewelry exclusively for about 6 months, until I started my true creative calling - tie dye! From that day on - I dedicated myself to mastering this colorful craft and haven’t looked back since.
Our main goal when returning home from life on the road was to find a way to work for ourselves & sustain a life on the road long term. And while the first part has come to fruition, our 2018 dream of long term road life has since been replaced with a stable home base & rainbow lab here in CT and the freedom to travel wherever/whenever our hearts desire since we're no longer bound by the constraints of the corporate world. Dreams really do come true!