Hi, I’m Ellie at Sealed with Bliss!
I’ve worked in Secondary Art and Photography education for over a decade. I have been encouraging pupils to fulfil their creative dreams, I’ve been an advocate for the need for creative minds in all industries and the valuable place the Arts needs to have in education. One thing I hadn’t done, is seen it for myself. Encouraged by a change of location and the increasing cost of childcare… I decided to take my own advice and get creative!
I started an Instagram account to track my experiments and any projects I was working on. If you'd like to see my Instagram feed click on any of the images in this blog. I am lucky enough to have worked with hundreds of mediums, but I’d never worked with Resin, so this was one of the first things I documented.
I bought an epoxy craft kit from Craft Resin to make leaving gifts for my children’s teachers and my colleagues at school. I thought, if it had the word ‘craft’ in it, it must be easy enough to do at home. I carefully put together a few keyring experiments, thinking they’d definitely go wrong, but I was enjoying the process! The next day I woke to check my moulds and they had solidified. Success! I think once you have successful pours, you just want to keep making! I’ve pretty much been setting new moulds everyday since!
I began making smaller experimental gifts and I was lucky enough for people to start ordering some of their own. (I’m 100% sure, that this was down to very supportive friends and family). This has been so helpful for me to encourage and fund my experimental process. It also lets you know which sort of products are popular. After the first few months, I slowly built more challenges for myself and invested in new projects and resources. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had lots of projects go wrong which is frustrating, but as you hit those hurdles, you know what not to do the next time.
The business came as a natural progression and I’m so pleased with how it is going! I have lots of ideas to progress further in the future, but for now with young children, this stage gives me the freedom to be creative, earn a wage and spend time with them as they grow!
If I were to give advice to anyone wanting to start out, I’d say, start small and perfect your process as you go- the rest will slot into place. I treat it like a hobby, which it still feels like 4 months on!
Just go for it!
Love Ellie x
