Like many of us, Marcela Cavaglieri needed a hobby during the pandemic. She and her husband moved to Naples full time from her native Argentina in spring 2020.

“I just got really bored,” she says now with a laugh.

She was a psychologist by practice but enjoyed working with her hands in her off hours. She spent decades refurbishing furniture, and even wrote two books on the subject.

Always looking for a new adventure, she started experimenting with resin when she was in Naples. She had come across a YouTube video of an artist working with the material and it sparked her creativity. She started making coasters, just for fun. A friend and fellow crafter saw her work and told her she should start selling at farmers markets. “I looked at her and said, ‘Who is going to buy resin coasters?’” she says.

At that first farmers market, she brought six sets of coasters and sold them all.

It was the start of her business, On The Rocks. Cavaglieri handmakes resin-based trays, coasters, napkin holders and other glittery household items that resemble geodes at first glance. She’s built the business through selling at farmers markets locally and keeping up a robust social media and digital presence. After attending a trade show in Dallas, she started to get into the wholesale business, and now On The Rocks is featured in 100 stores across the country.

She’s found pleasure in working with the material itself. Unlike some of her other crafts, she has less control over the material and has had to take a different mindset to the work. “Resin is a very peculiar material; it does what it wants,” she says. “I had to have more patience working with it. I had to make myself let go. But I suppose that’s what we had to do during COVID; we all had to reinvent ourselves a bit.”