For many English majors, including Adriana Carrig, words are everything: their inspiration, their tools for creativity, their way of telling the world who they are.
For Carrig, words also were something that could harm or heal. As a bullied teen, she intimately understood how cruel words could devastate a person. As an entrepreneur, she realized that a few kind words could change someone’s life for the better.
Carrig is the founder and CEO of Little Words Project, a brand she created in 2013 as a recent college graduate to use beaded bracelets in a kindness movement. The jewelry company has grown into a retail success, with nine stores and multiple pop-ups.
In late 2023, Carrig ventured into demi-fine jewelry, introducing the Little Layers collection of 14k gold vermeil pieces to transition her loyal beaded-bracelet customers into fine-jewelry lovers. Carrig says her goal is to create accessible yet high-quality everyday jewelry that tells the wearer’s story for all to see.
“In my heart, I’m a beaded-bracelet girl. But my next step and my dream is to go into actual fine jewelry with a 14k gold line,” she says.
Carrig’s own story starts in Livingston, N.J., where she grew up in a family who knew and understood jewelry’s allure and power. Her mom, a Mexican immigrant, married an Italian man whose parents owned a jewelry company that specialized in home parties. Carrig still has a nameplate necklace they made for her as a baby.
Despite a loving household, Carrig says bullying by her classmates made her feel less than. “I just did not fit in, and it showed,” Carrig recalls. “I made bracelets to get through those difficult times—words like laugh, breathe, and strength. It’s what got me through.”
Carrig received her B.A. in English and literature from the College of New Jersey in 2012. During those four years in school, she became friends with her sorority sisters—they’d bonded, in part, due to Carrig’s beaded word bracelets, she says.
“When women come together in true sisterhood, they can do amazing things. They can be powerful,” Carrig says. “I wanted to create a jewelry brand that was beautiful but also served as a vehicle for kindness, self-love, and positivity. It was about growing a community. I knew jewelry could be an outlet for those messages.”
Little Words has a unique pay-it-forward customer benefit, Carrig says. Each of the brand’s bracelets includes an ID tag that clients can use to connect to an online community called Nice Nation, where participants can chat, get to know one another, and, if they’ve shared their bracelet with another person, learn where their piece is now and how its empowerment message has affected the next wearer.
Long a fashion jewelry staple, friendship bracelets grew in popularity last year as Taylor Swift fans wore friendship bracelets to her concerts—inspired by a lyric on Swift’s album Midnights. It’s a trend Carrig loves, and she sees her Little Words Project and word bead bracelets as the OG in this space.
“A friendship bracelet is about nostalgia,” Carrig says. “For me, it’s about how when people come together, we’re all stronger. Our bracelets are empowerment tools as well as friendship bracelets. We let you share a kind word with others, and that creates real-life connections in a world that is otherwise disconnected and lonely.”
At the MTV Video Music Awards last September, Little Words fan Lance Bass of *NSYNC gave Swift a stack of Carrig’s bracelets. Swift has spoken in the past about being bullied, and the pop icon seems to Carrig like one of the ultimate nice girls out there, so she would love to work with her someday.
In the meantime, Carrig has a full schedule. Little Words recently debuted in Target stores, and in December the brand opened its first mall location, at Minnesota’s Mall of America.
“I feel really proud of what we’ve built. It’s an incredible foundation, and we’re ready to think about how we iterate and grow the brand,” Carrig says. “We’ve built a really deep network of roots. I know that no matter what happens, those roots will carry us through the next decade.”
Top: Adriana Carrig created Little Words Project to spread kindness through handcrafted bead bracelets and has now expanded into demi-fine jewelry. (Photos courtesy of Little Words Project)
Follow JCK on Instagram: @jckmagazineFollow JCK on Twitter: @jckmagazine
Follow JCK on Facebook: @jckmagazine
