Meet the Maker of all your Handmade Resin Jewelry! Plus Behind the Scenes

I am so proud to be the only one in charge of Sera's Beach! My name is Catherine Ann and I started Sera's Beach in 2016 after leaving a corporate cashier job that made me miserable.

I have been working full-time on my shop since then and am hoping that I can make it on my own with my standalone website this year at www.Serasbeach.com ! I have been in the eCommerce world through etsy and am so grateful for all the great customer support I have learned in the online service industry, but I am ready to be my own boss once and for all!

Since everything that I do for my business is done all my little ol’ me, let’s take a look at a day in my life! Sometimes it can be fun to dig into the lives of other people, and especially during a pandemic. I think we could all use a little more feeling of togetherness.

I start out by waking up and doing as much self-care and love as I can afford before my anxiety kicks in and I have to get working, usually with a healthy breakfast and a little family time with my fiancé and kitty cat. It’s always so important as a small business owner to take care of yourself as much as possible before diving into work because often times there isn’t a set schedule of tasks to be done the same way there is at a corporate job, and this can cause you to dive deep into work for hours on end when motivation strikes. That is totally OK! It’s actually been studied in the scientific community that when people work when they are motivated by their own schedule instead of to a strict set schedule they actually get more work done. It can be hard to give yourself a break as a small business owner, but it is necessary every day to live a balanced life!

Next I lock myself into my office so that I can demold jewelry that was made the night before. This part of my day is always very satisfying, and if you have every watched one of my demolding videos you will see why! It is often said to be oddly satisfying and lots of people will watch and listen to the sounds as soothing stimulus. Have you ever heard of ASMR? It stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and is a relaxing, often sedative sensation that you feel when you watch or listen to something like my demolding videos!

While I am in my office, I will look over all the orders that I got the day before. All of the jewelry that I sell is handmade by me, so it’s really important that I keep up to date with every single piece that is ordered by logging them down in my little blue book. I work on each order as they come in, so when I finish a piece I have to scratch it off the list and move on to the next one.

The jewelry is no where near being done at this point as I need to safely grind down and polish the edges of every single piece. This takes me anywhere from 1-2 hours every single day! It’s a lot of labor and a lot of love.

I do a lot cleaning every day also as I re-use every single mold day in and day out. This is part of my strategy for being environmentally friendly as I reduce and re-use every material that I can as part of the recycling process. This includes the mat that I use as a buffer in between the table and the resin that I am pouring, the molds themselves, all the cleaning cloths, and my safety gear like mask and goggles.

Finally at the end of the day I will sit down and actually pour some resin together and create beautiful jewelry! This is also one of my favorite parts of my job as everything that I and my customers imagine come to life. Bringing dreams to life is inspirational to me and it keeps me from being brought down by the every day grind. Knowing that what we are creating together is something to be cherished and remembered and even to help people on their spiritual journey of healing and discovery, it is so special to me. This labor of love takes me about 2 hours to accomplish everyday as I can make about 20 pieces each time. Once they are poured in the mold I let them set for at least 17 hours before I started the whole process all over again!

I hope you have enjoyed my daily life story, here is a little clip that I had fun making to express just how small this business really is, and how much I greatly appreciate each and every one of you who support me!