With spring in full swing, floral bouquets take center stage as an age-old way to make a loving statement or savor the scents of the season. As flowers bloom around us, local businesswoman Ella Huang of Ellaful can make your gorgeous bouquets last a lifetime. By preserving the vibrant, colorful folds of flowers in resin, she has found a creative way to savor natural wonders with sustainably beautiful designs.
Even though she’s been creating artwork for five years, Huang’s start was in a completely different industry. “Going into college I studied computer engineering,” she explained as we discussed Ellaful, sitting by a sun-kissed window. While studying computer engineering at the University of Albany in New York, Huang felt an itch to do a bit more artsy experimentation, and building on her experience in things like 3D printers, she began her research. “I needed to do something different, you know?” she says. “So, I started to look online and see what crafts people were doing.”
Soon, Huang fell in love with YouTube videos of resin artwork, which fed her innate creativity. It didn’t take long for her to begin flexing her craft on YouTube, making all her work as naturally creative as the materials she loves to use. By molding and bending nature to her liking, she grew a steady customer base from her College Township home.
Starting in September 2019, Huang went from selling her creations through Etsy to running the personal shop she always dreamed of. Brightly colored prints, iridescent earrings, plump rose paperweights, and ambered insect necklaces are a few of the pieces that dot Ellaful’s soft-colored online store. Immediately invoking thoughts of Pennsylvania’s lush forests, Ellaful’s products perfectly pair with April spring.
The beauty stands out so vividly in Ellaful’s work that you’d never guess she’s new to the naturalist scene. While the sun shines on her brown eyes, Huang describes her relationship with nature excitedly. “I wasn’t too in touch with nature growing up. Then I went to college, and it was different. The environment was different, and I just liked a lot of the forest, woods, greens, flowers.”
As a naturalist newbie, I relate to Huang’s late start to nature appreciation. Similarly to how I use my words, she uses her hands and her expansive imagination to show her love and appreciation of the natural environment. “Just stumbling on how people preserve nature — that’s how I use it to make my own things,” she says.
Ellaful’s custom-pressed flower letters stand out as one of the neatest creations on the website. She can take your favorite bouquet and cake it in resin, pressing each flower in beautiful form to fit perfectly in a see-through, glittering letter frame in heights between 6.75 and 10.75 inches.
Just as poignant as nature itself, Ellaful’s local popularity reminds me how many people still care for the Earth beneath our feet and how important it is to share our care with our communities. Huang says, “The support here is a lot more than I expected. I did my first market here at Way Fruit Farms, and I’m so glad I started here because everyone is so supportive.”
With a smile as warm as the beaming sun, she continues, “It feels like people believe in my work more than I do, so that’s really, really nice. Just the support allows me to keep going and keep brainstorming new things.” For Huang, the sky’s the limit on the new ways she can innovatively grow her business.
“I’m actually trying to blend more of [my artistic mediums],” she says, expounding on different ways she can combine her love of resin, wood, and acrylic in the future. “Even though I’ve been doing this for a little bit, it feels like I’m always experimenting, or always trying to experiment more.”
For people looking to begin their own handmade business, Huang has some sage advice at this point in her journey. “I would say just start it and learn as you go because I’m still learning. I’ve been doing this for five years now, and every day I’m still learning something new, and I think the best way to learn is by doing it.”
April showers bring Ellaful flowers to commemorate this Earth Day. Earrings crafted with care by Ella are heading to my mailbox to celebrate my deep, innate love for the planet. Every nature enthusiast can appreciate what Huang provides to the community by visiting her online store (Ellaful.com), following her on Instagram (@ellafuldeco), or watching her art in action on her YouTube channel (EllafulDeco). T&G
Angelique Redwood is a freelance writer based in State College.
