When Lisa Price lost her job twice in 2004, she did what most people do — she tried to find another one.When the job hunt Oven Mitt and Pot Holder Set didn’t pan out, “I just decided Chair Pad one day that I wasn’t going to look for a job anymore,” she said. “I just dove into my art stuff, and it made sense to me. I wanted to start working on printmaking all day.”

Artgoodies was born out of necessity and a passion for printmaking.

Price started working on a collection of art for a sale she called “The State of My Union” featuring vintage signs about jobs, unemployment, the price of gas and growing your own food.

Price grew up in the Chicago suburbs and traces her love of all things vintage to the summers she spent canning, gardening and sewing with her grandmother in northern Indiana. Price ended up settling in West Michigan in her late 20s, where her life was about to take a very crafty turn.

Success in 30 seconds

Itching to get back into printmaking, she carved a swallow block and printed the bird on paper.

“That’s it!” Price recalls thinking.

She took the still-wet towel to show a friend and soon bought $900 worth of plain towels to officially launch her plan to print her hand-carved artwork on fabric.

“I put just a few designs online and ... in 30 seconds I had a sale from someone in L.A., and I just couldn’t even believe it,” she said. “Right then I thought: ‘This is a really powerful tool.’”

Soon, Price began getting a lot of attention from popular blogs and magazines.

“The response was insane,” she said. “I was excited to finally find a market and people who understood an art-based product.”

And the rest is craft history. More than four years later, Price is printing thousands of towels each year and selling them to individual buyers and retailers around the globe.

Business just keeps growing

“I often don’t know what day of the week it is,” Price jokes.

The up side is that she gets to call the shots, and she loves what she’s doing.

“I don’t want to ever have to work for The Man again,” she said.

Something tells me she won’t ever have to.