piinkrete: conscious concrete creations
Shop Jenny's home goods and decor @ piinkrete.com
Jenny Boehme, in Circleville, OH, designs and handcrafts home goods out of concrete and reclaimed materials for her small business, piinkrete, which you can shop here.
She is also a branding master and graphic design freelancer under her studio name piink iink. We are proud to call her our Branding Guru. Jenny graciously shared insights into her making process, inspiration, and resourcefulness.
Katy: What inspires you to make things with your hands?
Jenny: I got it from my mama. She's always encouraged me to make things. We were always making things when we were younger, and it's never stopped. Whether that was Halloween costumes or baby doll clothes or just, you know, just art for the wall. My mom's always been my inspiration for that. She’s very artistic and creative herself.
I started piinkrete because I have to make things with my hands. I have to make things that are not on the computer. And it helps me with graphic design and stuff on the computer when I'm able to do something totally different.
Katy: How did you get started with concrete?
I've been doing concrete stuff for, gosh, three or four years at this point. I started using reclaimed materials with it because I liked the idea of decreasing my carbon footprint. Which then will hopefully make other people think about it at least, at the very least think about it.
The thing that started my love of concrete was we poured a concrete bar top at [my husband] Justin's storefront and I don't know what it was, but I mean, I love the gray. And you can make it rough. You can make it smooth. There's a lot of different things you could do with it.
That was another thing, Justin owns a bar. So we've got a bajillion cans and bottles that he goes through.
And so I was like, how do I use all these things we have? After that I started using the waste from the restaurant to create candleholders for the restaurant. That was really cool.
And it's cheaper to use things you already have.
Katy: Why concrete?
Jenny: I think automatically people think construction. Manly. Industrial. So I like taking it and creating a little more delicate things or using it in a way that I don't think people have seen before. Concrete can look very masculine. I like creating things that have a different shape and feel a little more feminine.
Katy: Talk more about your process with the concrete.
Jenny: I'll start off with the mold. Sometimes I 3D print things kind of depending on how custom the shape needs to be. Most of the time I just use boxes I have laying around or I'll find plastic bowls from the dollar store or even just bowls I've had laying around forever.
As far as molds go, I can make that pretty much out of almost anything that can repel water.
Mostly things that I've just got laying around that I can use.
Then the mixture of the concrete, I use glass. I use most plastics. I drink a lot of wine. So it is a lot of wine bottles, and then I'll get random stuff from my mom and aunt, usually blue glass because that is hard to find for some reason. I get materials from Nowhere Collective, too!
I crush it and break it up so that it has a mix of reclaimed things. I've also started to use reclaimed glitter, which has been fun. It doesn't come out quite as shiny as I thought but it has a really cool texture and little color specks. So I'm still experimenting on things in the mixtures. That's been a lot of fun to mix things in and see how it works.
And then once I have my mold and I pour my mixture, I have to be very patient while it's setting and that takes a couple of days.
After that I'll hand sand everything so that you can see all the aggregate inside the mixture and then everything gets a good coat to seal.
Katy: Do you enjoy working with the 3D printer?
Jenny: A 3D printer is interesting because the options are so wide open that it's a little daunting. But the fact that you can make anything in any shape is very helpful. I have to go through three different programs in order for it to start spitting out of the printer.
So it's kind of a process.
But the fact that I can design my own numbers and typography, and create totally custom molds is pretty cool.
