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Farm Wife Style: How these $25 earrings from a Canadian designer landed in the Oscars gift bag

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What a bunch of earrings on their way to #losangeles for the #Oscars looks like. #hardwork #farmwifestyle #shiny #earrings #academyawards #druzy #slay (Instagram/farmwifestyle)

By now, you’ve probably heard about this year’s Oscars gift bag. But between the more scandalous items (like the $1,900 vampire breast lift) and the wildly extravagant ones (a $55,000 private walking tour of Japan or a year of Audi rentals valued at $32,000), the company that produces the sought-after gift bag actually included a few really affordable items.

One of those items just so happens to be a pair of $25 glittery earrings created by Kim Ducherer, the Edmonton, Alta.-area woman behind Farm Wife Style.

“It feels amazing,” she says. “It feels so amazing to not only have them in the bag, but at the same time get some media coverage and the feedback from everybody.”

“To me it’s so cool because it’s not just something that’s going in the bag that people are going to overlook,” she continues. “It’s something that’s going to keep other people happy – regular people that aren’t celebrities.”

For Sunday’s Oscars, Ducherer shipped off 70 pairs in four colour combinations of her Druzy earrings. Earlier this year, 170 of her rose gold lightning bolt necklaces were included in the Grammys gift bag.

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Ducherer (right) at a trade show last summer (Photo courtesy Edge Photography)

But how does a Canadian designer, who just started her business a year ago, find their way into one of the most well-known gift bags in Hollywood?

“I just asked!” Ducherer explains.

Well, it wasn’t quite that simple. Ducherer says that after doing some research, she found another Canadian company that had been included in the gift bag in 2015 – so she reached out to them and asked if they could shed some light on how the whole process works. She says they gave her the email of someone at Distinctive Assets, the company that curates the gift bags – and so this past fall, she took a chance and sent an email.

“I didn’t even expect to hear back from them actually, but a week later, I got an e-mail back,” Ducherer says. “She said they loved what they saw – and they would love to have me in the gift bags.”

After that, she says there was a bit of a back and forth process, but that the whole thing was much easier than she expected.

“I had to choose a piece, they had to send the piece off to an approval board that looks at it,” she says. “Once the approval board liked it, I got to work.”

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The Druzy earrings (Instagram/farmwifestyle)

For the Grammys, she decided on her rose gold lightning pendant (which quickly sold out in her online store). Shortly after, she started selling the earrings, and saw they were a huge hit, so she decided to go with them for the star-studded Academy Awards.

And despite the fact that her designs are being seen by Hollywood’s biggest stars, Ducherer says that’s just a fringe benefit.

“Celebrities, I’m sure are used to expensive pieces of jewellery but the majority of the population isn’t and we don’t have that kind of money to spend on those sorts of things,” she says. “Being a mom of two, my kids when they were smaller, every nice necklace or piece of jewellery that my husband ever gave me, I didn’t want to wear it when my kids were little because they would grab at them and pull them off, and they would break. These are affordable enough that you can layer a whole bunch – and at the end of the summer if one breaks, I’m not going to be as sad about it because it wasn’t a $500 necklace.”

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The lightning bolt necklace (Instagram/farmwifestyle)

This is all pretty big considering Farm Wife Style just celebrated their first anniversary on Feb. 1.

“I just started doing this because I’ve always done really creative things – quilting, scrapbooking, home decor kind of stuff, so I just decided to try it and see if I was going to be able to find the materials and do the work and make something that I like and that other people were going to like too,” Ducherer says. “I just put myself out there, and now here I am.”

“Everything I choose to make, I would wear any of it,” she says. “I pick it out and I’ll make a few pieces and see if they sell – and if they don’t sell then I just don’t continue with those ones.”

And of course, she says she’s inspired by farming (no, Farm Wife Style isn’t just a name).

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Packing up for Los Angeles (Instagram/farmwifestyle)

“Everything that I do with my jewellery I relate back to farming,” she says. “It’s a very simplistic and basic profession and i feel like all my pieces kind of represent that also – they’re very simple, classy and elegant.”

What’s in the future for Farm Wife Style?

“I just want to keep doing this and having fun – I’m getting so busy, a couple of my friends have come to help me, and I really enjoy doing that – if it’s something I can grow and have fun at and hire me friends and we just have a good time, that I would be awesome,” she says.

Laughing, she adds, “Farming season is coming up soon though so I don’t really know – I might have to hire somebody when I’m out on the tractor, or hire somebody to go out on the tractor while I’m making jewellery.”