Hey! I'm Azra and here is my story...
This is my first blog post, so let's kick things off with the basics: I'm 24, live in San Francisco, work full-time, and rock Bozzy in my free time.
I was born in Bosnia & Herzegovina during the Bosnian-Serbian war which many don't know was the second largest ethnic cleansing after The Holocaust. My parents made an overnight decision to move to America. We first stayed in Croatia till it was safe(ish), then went forward to Germany to await our papers. We were the third Bosnian family to come over out of the "Bosnian Clan", a 15 family clan of people from my hometown of Tuzla.
We arrived in Orange County, California where the first Bosnian family settled.
After high school, I went off to college a.k.a. the four best consecutive years of my life. I studied Electrical Engineering where I was 1 of 20 girls out of 200 admitted for Fall 2011. It was an interesting experience being 1 of 2/3 girls in a class... that's a LOT of dudes.
They were a hit!
Fast forward to two months later it was Brad's birthday and I really wanted to gift him a handmade present. I went to Michael's craft store and after walking around through every aisle twice I decided puffy paint probably wasn't a good idea and moved onto the bead aisle... again. And staring at me were MORE sunglass/eyeglass chains but this time instead of buying them, I bought all the supplies I'd need to make them.
Brad loved them so it became my new birthday ritual, all of my close friends got chains for their birthdays.
Two years after I crafted Brad's chain, I moved to San Francisco and people started asking me whether I was selling my chains. So I slowly started putting together my Instagram and Etsy and taadaa Bozzy Chains was born!
Since then I've been enjoying the weirdness and inspiration and people SF has brought into my life and Bozzy Chains. It's been the most challenging and most fun first city to live in and I couldn't be happier!