Hiya, my names Cheryl and I am the proud owner of Chezy Handmade Designs.
My Chezy shop is like my baby. It’s a little something that I have worked on for over a year now and it literally brings me so much happiness. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard work and I do have the occasional melt down, but having that little something that I have built on my own and that I have worked so hard for, well it’s just a lush feeling.
My main passion is making earrings. I love earrings so much. I make them from epoxy resin and polymer clay, but epoxy resin is my main product of choice. Oooooo the sparkle of all that glitter and just popping them from their moulds is such a satisfying feeling. I do also make resin keyring’s; hair clips and I do dabble with my sewing machine and make scrunchies from time to time.
Click on the images to view the projects in all their glory on Instagram:
So how and when did I start this journey? Well, I started to create Chezy back in the first lockdown in 2020. There has always been something in me that wanted to start making my own earrings, but I just never knew which direction I wanted to take it and how to go about it. During lockdown, a lot of videos were being suggested to me on YouTube and these were videos of people working with resin in many ways. I was tidying up my jewellery collection one day and I came across a broken pair of yellow and blue plastic statement earrings. I just love these earrings and was wondering how they were made, and it just clicked. From that moment, I watched every video on resin making which literally threw my brain into total overdrive.
I remember the first time I made anything with resin. I lay everything out in my back garden on the concrete. I had bin bags on the floor, resin moulds, some mica powders and glitter. I was literally shaking. I’m very aware that if used incorrectly then resin can be harmful, so I wanted to try and get it right. I mixed a silver mica powder with some of my nail glitter, and I made some letter keyrings. I started my journey with craft resin, then I tried a few other brands and learned a few things. Over the past few months, I have come back to craft resin, and it just works for me. It’s perfect for non-yellowing ( I have experienced this with another brand and it ruined a lot of white earrings I made), glitter doesn’t sink as much which is perfect for how I like to use resin and I do just genuinely prefer it.
It’s taking me a little longer to get to me to be where I want to be with Chezy. I am a mum of 3 children, I work in a beauty salon as a nail technician and there are some things that I must do first in a day before I can work on making stuff and getting things uploaded onto my Etsy Shop. I do find this abit hard at times as all I want to do is make earrings and show everyone what I’ve been doing. What can I make? When can I make it? Will people unfollow me if I don’t post enough on social media? Too many questions I ask myself daily and I’m often left thinking that I wish I had more time to make this and that, but I do try to just push on with the time that I do have. I do believe that when the time is right in my life, then Chezy will grow into what I have worked so hard for it to be.
There are a few obstacles that I do have to try and push past. My main obstacle is my workspace. I do not have a room in the house that I can work from when resin making. I have a desk in my room for making polymer clay or using my sewing machine and I do like to take over the dining room table, but I don’t have a space for the resin side of things. There are no spare rooms in my house and I do not want the fumes in my house around my children so to get around this, I have made myself a little set up in my shed. Yes, my garden shed. The shed where the biggest spiders like to make themselves comfy and make me not so comfy. My shed leaks, it's cold in the winter and I have a small corner of space to try and work in but on a positive, at least I have found a space. Now in England, we have some weird weather. When it’s warm, I love putting my music on and being in the shed. Most of the time, it’s not that warm and I’m standing in a pink pair of wellies, I have a scraggy old hoody on, and I have a camping heater on rotate to keep things warm.
If I could give you some advice, then it would be to believe in yourself and just be you. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing, it doesn’t matter if they have been doing it longer or have a huge following, they are not you. You might not make something perfect the first time but with practice and learning from your own mistakes, you will achieve something amazing.
Lots of Love, Cheryl xxx
