You might say Sarah Cavender is one of those creatives who has figured it out. You know, how to actually make money doing something you love and at which you excel.

“After this last economic downturn, I still have loyal customers,” Cavender said in our recent interview at The Hotel Gansevoort in New York. “I’m grateful. I feel very fortunate. I’m allowed the luxury of creating for a job. And you don’t get it without having worked hard.”

Cavender was one of the designers at Impetus, “a first juried cooperative of studio designer collections handmade in the USA for fine retailers and editors worldwide.” In conversing with this spirited but low-key jewelry designer, you get the idea she is saving her passion-filled energy for the whimsical and edgy pieces she creates. She is a touch of artist with a flair for sculpting metal into beauty, a touch of practical businesswoman with a conscience.

With a sweeping view of the Meatpacking District and the Hudson River beyond as the backdrop and surrounded by her wares mind-bogglingly crafted from mesh, Cavender spoke of a 20-year career that has encompassed much more than she bargained for back at the Philadelphia College of Art in the early 1980s.

“I like the creative side of life,” she said. “I like to make things and fix stuff.”

So while it was drawing and painting that prompted her to go to art school, she majored in sculpture, liked working in three-dimensional, and found herself spending a lot of time in the jewelry department. She had a roommate who was working with screenings and eventually Cavender started making bows and roses out of this malleable metal, all the while working other jobs to get her business off the ground.

“I took them to Bergdorf and Bendel’s,” she said. “Bendel’s bought them and carried them for a few years. I thought, I’ve got a niche nobody else has. [Later] I sold to department stores. They were very supportive of crafts. Everybody was making things and it seemed like you could sell anything. We had these gold mesh belts. Chanel was doing mesh belts. I was in Vogue. But it was a trend. It was like a last gasp. Suddenly everything went to tiny and silver.”

By the mid ’90s, Cavender’s business went from 8-10 employees to her and one other.

“I had to regroup,” she said. “I asked myself, are you going to close the business?”

The answer was a resounding no.

Instead, she began recreating it by doing craft shows and the handmade section of the gift trade show. She got into colors and starting making bugs, butterflies and flowers, all from mesh that when done in a pin, for example, looks like fabric. Those were a natural to sell to museum stores and botanical gardens.

“I started to sell to those not depending on trend,” Cavender said. “I can go in so many different directions with it.”

She stays current on color trends so it keeps the pieces marketable. In some cases, she goes with making fewer and gearing to a smaller audience. Sculpted purses, for instance, in the $200 range.

“The idea is to straddle the line between crafts and fashion so I’m not relying on one industry,” Cavender said. “It’s like a game. What can we add to the line? Mostly recently it’s been hats.”

Her biggest client currently is the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has learned that for a small business to have longevity, there must be a diversity of customers and she will let them dictate -- to a point -- what they are interested in.

Located in Alabama since 1992, Cavender currently employs seven people and has her father doing her books. Her parents -- both music majors in college -- hail from Alabama, but because her father was in the Air Force and she had the “privilege of traveling” while growing up, going home to the South was more like a new experience.

“My parents wanted me to go back and change my major to computers,” Cavender said of her college days. “But making stuff is what I do. They weren’t sure I could support myself. They’re pretty convinced now.”

I noted what a role model she is for her college-age daughter and high school-age son. In my experience as a life coach, I’ve learned it is rare for children to be brought up in an atmosphere that fully encourages their creative gifts as a potential to a career.

“People think they’ll do [something creative] when they retire,” Cavender said. “You need to integrate it into your life.”

With our nation’s alarming unemployment rate, I said, I would hope those struggling to find work might consider tapping into their creative gifts. What do they have to lose? Cavender nodded, prompting me to ask if she had any advice to offer.

“One, be flexible and respond to the market of the niche you’re trying to fill and listen to the demands of the customer,” she said. “Two, you need persistence. It doesn’t always happen right away. You get an idea, maybe there’s a nibble. For me, after a couple of trade shows I know.”

Her instincts have been good. She’s occasionally cut back on employee hours, but tries not to lay off people.

“I have to support my family, I’m responsible to my employees,” she said. “I had to ask, how am I going to keep them employed in this economy? We had to raise our prices against the grain. Metals increased. Gas, UPS, everything increased. We had to do it in order to stay profitable.

“I raised my prices and do more spectacular pieces. People responded. We thought, what can we do to make them special? People are going to buy something important to them, special in some way. Our jewelry is domestically made, by real people. We don’t out-source.”

In the course of a year, her company creates about five lines. Cavender spends a couple of weeks thinking about each one and then a week or so making it.

“So I’m being creative about 15 weeks a year,” she said.

Her secret to success?

“I thought I had reached success right before I almost went out of business,” she said. “I’m humble at this point.”

And oh so grateful.