How I began

How I began

Before I was a resin artist and Resinating wasn't even a twinkle in my eye, my husband and I owned a large fresh produce store for nearly 17 years!  We worked the store 7 days a week, had an amazing 36 employees and lived and breathed fruit and veg!  For the last 6 years of this time I worked from home doing the office work, working this around my third child who was a newborn at the time.  I was a mad crafter, especially paper crafts  (think handmade cards, stamping, scrapbooking), but had to put all this on hold to get the office work done in any "free" time I had. 36 staff and a 7 day a week retail business pre internet banking was pretty full on!!  
When we sold our beautiful shop on Christmas Eve 2010, I had a long list of things I wanted to do and discover, and the top of the list was LEARN RESIN!  I don't really know where this idea came from, just a desire to create my own chunky rings!
12 years ago the wish to learn resin was far easier said than done! Resin for crafters was not wildly found (and rarely made!), and resin for resin art did not exist yet!  I'm actually a bit of a pioneer of the craft!!
I set to work to locate some resin to play with, that wasn't made for furniture or the boat industry, and this eventually led me to a fibreglass and resin shop in an industrial area south of Perth. (Think boat repair and surfboards!)
This one resin they sold that I could use was the only craft type one available in Australia at the time and was imported from the USA.  It was used for casting resin items, mostly door knobs, which was the kind I needed to make BIG RINGS ♥ I'm a huge fan of the statement ring and this was my main reason for wanting to learn resin.  My glass rings hand blown in Margaret River did not bounce across the kitchen floor well - trust me on this! #mumofboys
It was early 2011 and there was not much available for me to work with.  I am innovative though and learn by trial and error, so I happily set to work to learn all I could from my experiments. And experiment I did!
I learned pretty quickly that I did not like the hard plastic moulds that were all that were available for jewellery making back then, and that resin did not stick to silicone - ice block trays it was then! I stalked EVERY SINGLE kitchen shop in Perth and around Australia as I travelled, finding as many silicone ice cube trays that I could.
Now 2011 kitchenwares were HUGELY DIFFERENT to 2022 kitchenwares.  Only rectangle ice cube trays were available in 2011, but by 2013 things had changed and I had collected an amazing array of novelty shapes and sizes!  I had also discovered a resin supplier in Perth that had started stocking a new craft resin for jewellery that was clearer and not flexible when warmed by your body, important when making rings and bangles.  Still in an industrial area the supplier started stocking a range of creative resin products alongside their industrial ones - winning!
My most popular range at this time was my "Let's Celebrate Boys" range.  Think Lego, starwars, dinosaurs and more! Boy did I cop flack from non boy mums about this range, but these items remained my most loved.
I picture the Resinating boy as a bit of a cool dude!  He's unique, marching to his own song - perhaps wearing his wellies with his Iron Man dress-up and light sabre right now!  He brings a smile as you think of his quirkiness!
His love of Lego is phenomenal!  Star Wars is EVERYTHING!  He even changed his name to 'Luke' just the other day :) Superheroes rule.  Bring him more dinosaurs and action figures!
As he grows his love for Lego quietly turns to Minecraft, dress-ups turn to skate clothes (there are skulls on everything!) Star Wars turns to ... well I think the love for Star Wars never quite leaves them!!
What a wonderful, well-adjusted young man you have raised!  Our world is definitely richer when we celebrate our boys!
As the mum of 3 handsome, noisy, energetic, sporty, geeky, loving and mischievous boys I have often found it hard to treat them to handmade gifts.  From experience I know that boys love jewellery too and it is often too hard to find something that appeals to them without being girly!  This is why I have created my "Let's Celebrate Boys" range featuring many of the things that they love - Lego, skateboards, army men, skulls, robots, Star Wars and dinosaurs to name a few.    I LOVE creating this range and hope your young man's eyes light up too. 
I think that EVERYONE should celebrate their boys :)
       Marina x
I stopped creating my "Let's Celebrate Boys"  range due to the licencing issue with these products (star wars and the like). I received a cease and desist letter from Mojang's lawyers about my funky little Minecraft bag tag I created from a square ice block mould and a hand drawn Creeper face!!  True story!  Was a little scary so I started to work away from these lines just doing the more generic boy loves (robots, bugs, dinosaurs etc), so that I could sleep at night, then stopped altogether as my boys grew older. That's kinda sad now that I reflect on it!
In about 2015 through my many experiments I started creating in a new style of  working with resin, now commonly known as resin art or flow art.  I quickly fell in love with this style of creating with my beloved resin teaching myself better ways to get the results I was wanting.  So many lessons learned!!
So now I was doing two different styles of resin work - casting for jewellery and trinket dishes and vases etc, using my own handmade moulds, and the resin art style creating wall art and homewares.
In 2019 I began to make my own wooden serving boards from scratch.  Another set of skills learned!  I feel this sets my work apart from others and gives my goodies another touch of something special.  I'm happy with how these handmade boards are evolving as I add to this skill set.
Fast forward to 2022 and I have just celebrated a full 10 years in business!  I've just moved to a new website, my studio workshop has GROWN and it always has a custom make on the go! So grateful for this ♥
And still each and every time I make something with resin I am blown away by the details and the shine and the very tactile nature of it.  It just feels so good!
I rarely stop and think of how far I have come since those early pioneering days, or how my style has changed or how my work has improved with each lesson I've taught myself.  Maybe I should!  
xx
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