Job title: Bling applier

Companies that hire them: Independent designers, small boutiques.

How to find out about openings: Contact firms directly.

How much you can earn: Up to $100,000 with your own business; $35,000 to $80,000 as a designer.

Useful skills: Bedazzling design savvy, steady hands, and a high tolerance for the scent of glue.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: Fewer than 500.

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In the world of accessories, bling is in.

At least it is for Angela Oh, a crafty actress turned entrepreneur whose business card reads "Bling Goddess." Her business? She adds a little sparkle to plain-Jane cell phones by cladding them in colorful crystals and custom designs. “I started by doing my own phone,” says Oh, who traveled frequently during her film and television career, brandishing her bedazzled Motorola flip phone wherever she went. Her brand of bling drew plenty of attention. “I started to notice that everyone on set would start clamoring. Men, women, gay, straight—everyone would chase me down in the airport.”

Though she hadn’t studied art or design, she found it easy to master the craft work. “I’m pretty creative,” she says. “Through trial and error, I’ve perfected it.” She started customizing phones for friends and colleagues in 2004 and then opened an internet business, including a V.I.P. service through which clients could have Oh customize a phone for $295 to $395. But she soon found she didn’t have time to personally bling all her orders and that some potential customers were loath to part with their handsets. So she created the Bling Ring Couture Kit to allow customers to decorate their own phones. The kits, which cost $125, sell at high-end boutiques like Fred Segal in L.A. and La Bella in New York. Now Oh focuses on celebrity clients; Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lindsay Lohan, and Hilary Duff have all been customers.

These days Oh and her two assistants create custom designs for a few hundred phones each month and sell twice as many kits. Overhead is low: Oh buys Swarovski crystals in bulk, and she doesn’t need much else besides tweezers and “really good crystal cement.” Right now she has a skull-and-crossbones pattern on her own BlackBerry—the same pattern Ashlee Simpson requested for her Sidekick. Oh’s phones are also guest starring on NBC’s Las Vegas and alongside Paris Hilton in a movie, National Lampoon’s Pledge This!

What happens if and when the current pimp-my-phone craze dials down? “Almost anything can benefit from a little bling,” says Oh, who is already receiving requests to move beyond simple cell phones. One man recently came to her L.A. office with a radar detector he wanted customized for a female friend.

 

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Typical Day

10 to 11 a.m. Checks and responds to some of the 60-odd emails on her relatively new BlackBerry, adorned with crystals in a skull-and-crossbones pattern. Right now there are a bunch of messages from Jessica Simpson's and Ashlee Simpson's assistants.

11 to 12 p.m. Packs up Bling Ring kits. Oh tries to ship orders the same day she receives them.

12 to 1 p.m. Blings a custom order. Oh mostly leaves the blinging to her designers these days, but she will take on especially interesting designs, such as a recent request from a girl who'd received her pilot's license and wanted the back of her phone decorated with a plane flying through clouds.

1 to 2 p.m. Drops off packaged orders at FedEx, U.P.S., or the U.S. Postal Service for delivery.

2 to 3 p.m. Has lunch at M Café, a macrobiotic restaurant where such celebrities as Adrian Grenier and Laura Dern have been sighted. Oh indulges in a veggie burger called the Big Macro. Then it's off to a workout at Barry's Bootcamp, where she might find Christina Applegate or Marley Shelton on the treadmill beside her.

3 to 4 p.m. Stops in at a television or film audition, then navigates through the L.A. traffic back to the home office.

4 to 5 p.m. Returns calls and emails, often from retailers in countries like Saudi Arabia and Switzerland that want to carry the Bling Ring kits.

5 to 6 p.m. Performs organizing tasks necessary to any business, sorting through stacks of snail mail and bills.

6 to 7 p.m. Conducts a conference call with her new sales team to plan its strategy for the coming weeks.

7 p.m. Personal time—which usually means more work. Oh takes acting classes, and if she's preparing for a role or an audition, she'll read scripts and rehearse her lines.