Reveille

IN THE BAG: [above] Rebecca Gomez
shows off one of her creations for
her purse business, Eye-Kandy.

When Rebecca Gomez sees an empty
bag of chips, she sees more than a
simple aluminum wrapper- she sees
Eye Kandy.
Gomez, an apparel design junior,
creates purses, wallets, even curtains
from food and drink wrappers. She
sells them through her newly formed
business, Eye Kandy.
Designing purses was not the career
path Gomez originally envisioned for
herself. When she was young, she
wanted to be a librarian. "I always
thought I wanted to sit behind a
cubicle," she said. "It looks like things
are turning out differently."
Gomez has good reason to excited
about her future prospects. After only
a few months in operation, she's
selling 30 to 40 purses and wallets a
month, she said.
Her first creation was a room curtain,
she said. It was sewn from cereal
boxes, candy wrappers and coke
labels. She enclosed the curtain in
plastic and her first Eye Kandy
creation was finished.
At the prompting of her mom, Gomez
began to create purses. "It was just a
hobby," she said.
The hobby blossomed into a
successful business enterprise when
Gomez entered the Baton Rouge Bead
Show in June of this year.

[Left] Gomez, an
apparel design
junior wears a purse
she designed
using an empty bag of
Lay's potato chips

"I was nervous," she said. "Of
course I like all my purses but it was
just hard for me to imagine other
people would like them."
Gomez went to the show with 20
purses, she said. She sold all of them.
She makes the purses and wallets
out of anything, she said--ramen
noodle wrappers, drink boxes, juice
pouches, Zapp's potato chip bags and
even beer cartons.
When she receives all the empty
wrapper and containers, she cleans
them, and sews them together.
Her most popular items are her
purses she said. They take her about
30 minutes to make. She recently
started making wallets and she said
shower curtains are next on her list.
Her "hobby" has turned into a
full-blown business. She has a website
where she takes orders. She
custom-makes purses-she even ships.
Her purses are copyrighted, and she's
working to get the Eye-Kandy logo
trademarked.
"It all seems to be happening fast,"
Gomez said.
And Gomez's fiance, Blake, said the
success is a surprise for Gomez.
"At first, she was nervous to do
anything," said Autin, a business junior
at Delgado Community College. "I had
to tell her all the time, 'This will work.'"
Cathy Frondorf, a business senior
who has seen Gomez's purses, said she
loves them all-especially the purse
made from Capri Sun wrappers.
"They are just too cute,"she said.