Behind the Counter: Sunflower Vintage Designs

Jackie Colacce is crafting herself a new business plan.

In December, the Harewood Park resident opened Sunflower Vintage Designs, an antique and craft store on Eastern Avenue.

The shop sells new and vintage furniture, linens, home accessories, lamps, clothing, retro items and other pieces put up on consignment.

Colacce, 48, previously worked with her boyfriend in his veterinary importer business, but decided to open her own business pursuing her longtime crafting hobby.

"I always liked decorating and I'm good at it. I decided to give it a try," Colacce said. "I had it set up in my house for a few months. With being in a residential neighborhood, having people coming all the time, I decided to look for a storefront."

Colacce answered a few questions from Essex-Middle River Patch.

When did you realize you wanted to go into business with your craft?

I've been wanting to do it for pretty much all my life, honestly. I've always been good at decorating. I've been taking decorating classes at Harford Community College and just always enjoyed it and collected things. I was always into antiques as a little girl. My grandmother was into antiques and collecting down in Virginia and I just always enjoyed it so I thought I'd give it a try. Everybody always tells me how beautiful my house is so I thought, well, I'll try it out.

Tell me a little about how you developed the emphasis on environmentally-friendly practices and why it's important to you?

I've always been involved and worried about the environment, and I thought well it's big right now, so I thought I'd get paints that are environmentally-friendly, especially with painting. I don't want to have to dispose of the paint and put it, you know, into the water system and things.

The milk and chalk paints are what is popular now and they're environmentally-friendly and a lot of people like that.

You've been at it for two months in this new storefront. Tell me what surprised you about getting the business going.

How friendly the people have been and how welcoming and how everybody's glad to have a shop out here. They said it's been needed a long time.

People have been really great coming in, letting me know they're happy I'm here.

A lot of people have been coming in saying they have things they want to sell, which is surprising, or things they want to consign.