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Sunstone Clay Co was founded in 2022 by artist Naomi Inamori. After a life-changing cancer diagnosis in 2021, Naomi found herself trying to emerge from a year-long healing hibernation. She describes the darkest part of her recovery as reaching a new level of exhaustion, where she felt like she could melt away into nothing. "I almost felt resigned to this, and nearly welcomed it; that scared me," she reflects. "Then one day I was on Instagram and came across a reel of someone making faux stone out of polymer clay!" She was in awe and excited at the prospects of what she could create. "Where beforehand I was sleeping my days away to avoid the struggle, once I discovered polymer clay, I began dreaming about what I could create the next day, and I WANTED to get out of bed." She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the distraction she needed to forget her health enough to focus on breaking out of that hibernation.
"How weird is that?" she questions. "Art is what helped me want to live and fight while in my lowest and darkest. Or maybe… how POWERFUL is that?!" she wonders excitedly. "I have personally experienced the therapeutic benefits of channelling my energy into creating something, and now I'm a true believer that everyone should have a creative outlet."
Naomi credits the discovery of this medium with adding a new level of healing to her journey. "I was in the midst of experiencing my body physically healing after such trauma, and polymer clay started to heal my spirit, and gave me a desire to escape my low."
She continues to heal and create to this day, and loves the idea of little pieces of her soul being worn throughout the world. "I'm so honored and touched that something that I've made from scratch makes other people happy and helps them to express their own uniqueness and inner magic," she continues. "What better way to live this precious life than doing something I love AND adding joy and beauty to the world in my own tiny way."