Whether Chynna Jones has served you at the dispensary where she works or you’re with her in a sesh, you’ll notice her uniquely crafted nails commanding your attention. She often wears a different design on each of her hands, and while she lives for the reaction she gets from her customers and bystanders, she said it’s also quite a challenge to figure something like that out.
“I love when I’m doing my thing and talking with my hands, so I love when people say ‘Oh, I love your nails,’” she said. “Not too many people do two different designs for both hands — they usually aren’t related unless it’s maybe like a holiday.”
Born and raised in Baltimore County, Chynna said she was always active as a child, describing herself as a “never in the house” type of person. After graduating high school, she said her next move was attending culinary school, with the goal of opening a restaurant in Maryland that would serve Cannabis-infused dishes. She would go back to school a few times after graduation to try for a degree but ultimately never finished.
“I still learned a lot from there,” she said about her time in culinary school. “Not taking anything away from that, that just ended up not being my avenue.”
Like many others, Chynna’s career plans changed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, and her focus pivoted to starting over in a new industry: the beauty industry. Feeling a need to keep up with her self-care routine and with businesses closing their doors, Chynna bought a nail kit from Amazon and took it upon herself to start doing her own nails. After scrolling through TikTok and Instagram and seeing others in the same situation, she said it looked easy enough to try for herself.
“I was always a girly girl. I prefer to have my nails done, hair done, all of that,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to still maintain that and save some money too. Now we’re here, and I’ve been doing them for five years.”
Finding her stride, she started taking on clients after experimenting with some designs on her own nails. At first she was nervous about what comes with working with the public, but she said after doing it for so long she’s found ways to appeal to her clients’ wishes while pushing herself to make the most of the surface she’s given to work with.
“I try to figure out different ways to bring my clients outside of their comfort zone to get them to do something different,” she said, adding that a lot of her clients are looking for simplicity, for example, but still want her personal touch added. “When they look at it, they’re like, ‘Wow, I’ve never gotten this before,’ and I love it.”
Around the same time she began doing nails, Chynna was also getting into the Cannabis industry. She said she started smoking at 18, around the time she graduated high school, adding that she knew nothing about Cannabis other than that she liked how it made her feel. She began hearing about dispensaries opening in the state around the start of the medical program and applied to work at one, eager to learn more about the industry and the plant itself.
During one of her last stints at culinary school, she applied for a job with Zen Leaf and was hired soon after. While she’s currently working at Star Buds, she credits the team at Zen Leaf for training her and giving her the knowledge and confidence to train and teach not only her patients but also her fellow budtenders, working her way up to being one of their employee trainers after becoming a team lead.
Moving to Star Buds helped her branch out creatively, expanding her business to offer custom joint pins, earrings and key chains. Wearing the earrings at work and having co-workers repping her pins, the demand to make more grew once people started taking notice, in addition to those who separately reach out to her on social media. Chynna said her shop eventually started selling them as well, even giving her a spot to do some pop-ups. She said the community she’s built from selling her art and the connections she’s made that help her maintain and promote her business motivate her to keep things moving and pushing her to find her next piece.
“I love making [the pins and earrings] look real, but it’s not real. I like the fact that I make it look so real that people are trying to crack them open,” she said. “That’s my way of expressing art.”
Chynna said her go-to way of consuming is to light up a joint of some tasty flower, with overall taste being more of a factor in how she’ll enjoy her medicine instead of terpene count or THC levels. “I don’t chase numbers; I just want to be able to taste it,” she said, adding that she also takes a few other things into consideration when picking a strain, like the brand, strain name and smell. “If it smells good, you know it’s going to taste good.”
Like other workers in the industry, Chynna said she enjoys what she does but still asks herself what the perfect job in the industry might look like for her. The thought doesn’t stop her from putting her head down and chasing opportunities to expand her business, like securing a vendor spot at this year’s AFRAM festival this past June.
“One thing my old boss would always teach me is, if you want a job, you better make it yourself at that point,” she said. “I want to push this business as much as possible, be in pop-ups and be recognized by more dispensaries. I’ve just got to lock in at this point.”
