About

Hi, I'm Aria! I've been crafting since I was 6, but pigment work is the one thing I never get tired of making. I started with crochet as a little kid. My mom taught me the chain stitch and I took it from there, learning as much about it as I possibly could. It started a lifelong love of making things with my own hands. There are so many crafts I love to make, but for the sake of not boring everyone to death with that list, we are gonna skip forward to my high school years.

When I was in high school I struggled a lot with being in color guard and having to wear eye makeup that made my eyes burn and swell. I did not have a lot of experience wearing make up before my sophomore year in high school, and I had always heard people say beauty is pain. So I assumed it was normal. After a while, I told my mom about the pain and she informed that it was in fact, not normal. So she went on a mission to help me find eyeshadows that would not hurt. Some brands we found hurt less than others, but they all still hurt to some degree, whether it was immediate, or took an hour. I gave up on color guard after my second year because I couldn't find a wqy around the make up issue. Then I forgot about make up again for a while, until I graduated college with my degrees in chemistry and administration of criminal justice.

After I graduated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to school to be a forensic scientist but ended up leaving the profession because I felt way out of my league. I was nervous about the possibility of making a mistake that ends up with either the wrong person blamed, or the right person being released. As a 20-year old, that just was a bit too much for me to handle. So I completely changed gears and became a chef. (Cooking is just food chemistry, right?) While working as a chef, I spent my free time continuing to learn other crafts and skills. I rediscovered my love of handmaking, and the question I always found myself asking: "Can I make this?" It turned out, I was missing the first part, "Where do these things I see on shelves come from?" It reminded me of how hard it was to find eyeshadow that didn't hurt from stores, so I decided to deep dive into the process of how they are made. I wanted to find the cause of the pain, and then find a solution. So with my mom's help, we tried about 100 eyeshadows, testing everything from different pigment types, different brands, different ingredients. The link was the preservatives. My next thought was how to design a formula for eyeshadow that had all the traits I wanted: long lasting, cool colors, and no preservatives needed to maintain its safety.

I spent 3 months straight testing out different formulas with the indredients I found. I was testing them while in 100 degree heat and doing deliveries on a moped for longevity. I was testing and waiting for the pain to set in. I was relieved to find no pain came from the ones I mixed. I found the solution to my problem, and even though it is a relativey minor problem in the grand scheme of things, it was still something I wanted to challenge myself to fix. I wanted to make high school me proud.

From there, it was an easy leap to other products that use pigments, like nail polishes and watercolor paints. I was especially excited about polish since the polishes I used as a kid would wreck my nails, so having access to improved formulas that reduce the harmful effects has been amazing! I thoroughly enjoy the making process for all of them. It is so satisfying watching the colors swirl and change as they blend into the other ingredients, even if I have made that same color before. It has been a long journey to get to where I am today, and I couln't be more proud of myself for finally turning my years long passion project into something more for my life.