Christina Eadie opened Accents in Glass on High Street in Hampton this past January, never meaning to run a retail store.

At the time. Eadie's business was interior design, making stained glass pieces such as panels for a cabinet door.

Among other pieces, she designed an original leaf and vine pattern for two windows for the Starvish Manor showhouse in Hampton Falls in 2001. This was a benefit for AIDS Response-Seacoast. Eadie, who was just starting out, was asked to do the windows.

The homeowner bought the two panels for $125 each. Eadie was established.

She rented space from Linda Grimaldi Raymond at Home Decor on Route 1 and then expanded into her own shop on High Street.

"When I came here, I had no plans to do retail," Eadie said.

People on the street had other ideas. Seeing her sign and open door, customers began coming in.

She sells stained glass to hang in a window, lamp shades and beach kaleidoscopes, desktop glass pieces holding sand and shells which she also sells wholesale to other retailers.

Raw glass, ranging in price from $7 a square foot to $70 a square foot, is sold to other artists creating their own pieces.

Commissioned work is now part of Eadie's sales, along with retail and wholesale sales, raw glass and supplies, and classes in the shop and at local schools.

"I'm doing very well overall," she said. "The jury's out, does it continue? I don't know."

Eadie took her first stained glass course in 1979, not out of a burning desire to team but to accompany her mother to class. She took to the art immediately.

"I had no real draw to it," she said, "when I got into it, I thought, this is really cool."

Eadie, from San Antonio, Texas, began her career as an accountant. She moved to Portsmouth with her husband, who is from the area, and worked for a CPA firm in Portsmouth and later for a company in Hampton.

At the Hampton job she noticed a co-worker had a piece of stained glass hanging in the window that needed repair. She volunteered to fix it.

That got Eadie started on switching careers.

Eadie is expanding classes to include a course on mosaics. Starting this month, she'll begin making product for Christmas sales.

She has also hired a part-time employee, Diane Gordon of Hampton. "There's so much more satisfaction in it," she said. "I really do love it."