Stefania Medeiros trades in incense, sage, crystals and metaphysical needs. But, when she talks about her new shop, she is a hard-driving, goal-focused businesswoman.
Last June, Medeiros opened Ethereal Oddities, a gift shop with a “witchy vibe” but a bright and airy feel on Mendon Road in Cumberland.
The store’s products are made by Medeiros and a dozen other artisans, and they include flower-infused soaps, comic and horror mugs, and her own resin-and-wire jewelry with swirled pigments.
Medeiros opened the shop sooner than she expected; it was supposed to be part of a longer-range plan. But last summer, a good opportunity intervened.
She has been busy. From 2012 to 2017, she lived and worked in Los Angeles, studying special-effects makeup. She graduated from Toni & Guy Hairdressing Academy in Cranston. She works in the night program at Toni & Guy and teaches continuing education through Rhode Island School of Design.
Since July, Medeiros said, Ethereal Oddities has registered gross sales of about $8,000.
Medeiros meets many artists online and through local maker spaces, and the shop flowed from those connections. But, she said, “I have a passion for sculpture, and a craving to keepmaking things of my own.”