Hi, Ellie
Start free
For resin & candle makers

Your studio shelf, finally remembered. — with Ellie.

Hi, Ellie is the cozy little studio companion that keeps your pigments, waxes, materials and recipes in one place — and whips up new pours from what’s actually on your shelf.

Start free — no card →See what she does
Open beta, made by two humans in Birmingham, ALFree tier with 50 items, no time limitWorks on phone & bench
Ellie, the Hi, Ellie studio companion, ready to help at the bench
Built at the bench —Birmingham, ALOpen beta · 2026
01What Ellie does

Everything your shelf does — minus the sticky notes and last year’s spreadsheet.

Built around the three things makers do every day: keep track of what’s on the shelf, write down what works, and try the next idea. Ellie holds the rest.

A shelf you can actually see

Add every pigment, wax, resin, wick, mold and mica you own — by hand, from a spreadsheet, or by snapping the label. Mark anything In stock, Low, Out, or Needs-order, and Ellie keeps the whole shelf in view at a glance.

Pantry · Stock flags · Reorder lists

Recipes that stay readable

Select your colorants, your ratios, your steps. Make notes as you go, take photos during and after the pour. Each recipe gets a stitched, print-ready version you can take to the workbench — or have Ellie read it to you with step-by-step, hands-free voice.

PDF export · Bench mode · Hands-free voice

Ellie, your studio buddy

Tell her a feeling — “ocean sunset, soft pearl shimmer” — and she’ll work the shelf to find something you can actually make today. No fictional pigments, no Pinterest dreams. Or, let Ellie dream, and search hundreds of known vendor pigments to help you find just the right color to match your idea.

AI grounded in your real inventory

Batches with a memory

Every pour and burn test you finish gets logged — what went in, how it cured, what set clean and what didn’t. Look back six months later and Ellie still remembers which Tuesday went wrong, and why. Want to figure out what went sideways — a pour that wouldn’t set, a candle that tunneled? Ellie is right there with tips to troubleshoot the issue.

Batch log · Notes · Cure timers

Running low? It’s already on the list.

Flag anything low, out, or needs-order and it lands on your shopping list — each with a link to buy it again. Materials a new idea called for but you don’t have yet show up too, so one trip covers everything. Take it as a PDF, copy it, or hand the whole thing to Ellie.

Buy links · Dream-it-up gaps · PDF & copy

Snap the barcode, skip the form

Point your phone at a new bottle’s barcode and Ellie identifies it and guesses what kind of item it is — colorant, resin, wax, or supply — so adding it is a tap, not a form. The scan happens right on your phone and the photo’s never stored. No barcode, or no match? Just type in the code.

Barcode scan · On-device, never stored · Mobile-first
The Ellie wizard

“Make me something with what I already have.”

The hard part of making isn’t the pour — it’s deciding what to pour. Ellie reads what’s on your shelf and builds recipes around it. When one leans on something you’re low on or don’t own yet, she flags it and can drop it straight onto your shopping list with a buy link.

Grounded in your real pantry — every recipe is buildable today, or close to it.
Pick how hands-on you want her: guided step-by-step, a back-and-forth collab, or advisor mode when you just want her take.
Saves to your recipe library. Love it? Remix it — or send it to the bench and print the card.
Inventory-grounded · Shopping-list buy links · Remix & take to bench
Inspire

“That color, right there — make it yours.”

Saw something you love? A sunset, a tidepool, a friend’s scarf — hand Ellie the photo and she pulls the palette out of it, then tells you how to get there: the colors, a few techniques, and notes for the bench. She checks it against your shelf, too — what you’ve already got, what’s a close stand-in, and what you’d need to grab. The gaps go to your shopping list in a tap.

Snap a photo · Matched to your shelf · Gaps → shopping list
Scent Studio

“Give me a scent for tonight’s mood.”

Tell Ellie the mood — cozy, fresh, gourmand, woody, or something all your own — and she reads your fragrance shelf to build a blend around it. Every oil gets a share of the blend and a quick read on how well it fits the mood, and if it calls for a note you don’t stock, she flags the gap before you commit. Like what she found? Save it to your Inspiration Diary, or hand it straight to the wizard to build the candle around it.

Mood → blend · Shelf-checked shares · Gaps → shopping list
The Inspiration Diary

“Every palette, every blend you’ve chased — kept.”

Every Inspire palette and every Scent Studio blend saves itself — no button to forget. Ellie names each one and lines them up as a swatch-dotted grid you can flip back through, rename, or clear out. Found one worth making? Hand it to Ellie and she’ll turn it into a real recipe.

Auto-saved · Colors & blends together · Feed any one to Ellie
02How Hi, Ellie came to be

Built in a real studio, by two people who use it every day.

Hi, Ellie isn’t a venture pitch or a side project on a roadmap. It’s a tool a maker needed, built by a partner who could build it — for makers who needed the same thing.

— it started, as most useful things do, with a problem nobody had solved yet.

Hi, Ellie grew out of Frost Pen Co., a small resin pen business in Birmingham, Alabama. The shelves there fill up fast — dozens of pigments, micas, resins, embeds — and the question that keeps coming back at the bench is the same one every maker asks: “with what I already have, what could I make?”

We went looking for a tool that could answer it. Something that knew the actual shelf — not a generic recipe site, not a Pinterest board, not an AI that invented pigments it had never seen. Nothing existed. So Mike built it.

Mike has spent thirty years in IT, but he isn’t a developer by trade. Hi, Ellie is the first product he’s shipped this way — written hand-in-hand with Claude as a development partner, across dozens of sprints and counting, every decision logged. The AI inside Ellie isn’t the headline; the headline is that the tool finally exists.

Andrea joined to do the other half — the half Mike isn’t built for. She’s been discovering the resin world right alongside the product, learning the craft as Ellie learns it. If you’ve talked to Hi, Ellie, you’ve probably talked to Andrea.

That’s the whole company. Two people. One shared studio. No investors, no growth chart on the wall. The income goal is modest and the mission is genuine: a calm, dependable tool that makers actually use.

— hi, I’m

Mike

the one at the keyboard

Thirty years in IT, none of them as a developer. Hi, Ellie is what happens when someone who’s spent a career around software finally gets the tools to build the thing they wanted. Builds in public, sprints in the open, ships every couple of weeks.

Lives at the workbench when he’s not at the keyboard — which is how Frost Pen Co. ended up being the test studio for everything Ellie does.

30 Years in ITFrost Pen Co.Birmingham, AL
— hi, I’m

Andrea

the one who shows up

New to resin, in love with the community already. Spends her days talking to makers, watching pours, learning what works and what jams up at the bench — then bringing the rough edges back to Mike.

If you write to Hi, Ellie, she’s the one writing back. If you see us at a maker meetup, she’s the one with the sticker sheet. Treats every conversation like the most interesting one of the day, because usually it is.

CommunityLearning the craftBirmingham, AL
— come pour with us.

Hi, Ellie is in open beta. Come help us shape it.

We’re letting makers in a few at a time and writing the next sprint around what we hear. If that sounds like the kind of thing you’d want to be part of — your shelf, and Ellie, are ready when you are.

Join the beta →
03Pricing

Start free. Stay free as long as you want. Grow when the shelf does.

Ellie knows what’s on yourshelf — she’s not a generic chatbot, she’s your studio’s memory. Every plan, every tier, every recipe stays grounded in your real inventory.

Free
— get your shelf in order.
$0free, forever

A real working space — not a teaser. Enough room to organize a starter shelf and try Ellie a few times each month.

  • 50 inventory items — pigments, waxes, resin, the works
  • 3 Ellie recipes / month, drawn from your real shelf
  • 3 Inspire sessions / month, pulled from your photos
  • Unlimited saved recipes & batch notes
  • Batch log & cure timers — every pour, remembered
  • Bench-mode PDF export
  • Phone & tablet · gloves-friendly
Start free
No card · no time limit
Maker
— Ellie on tap, day in, day out.
$22/ mo · or $188/yr — two months free

Once Ellie has seen your whole shelf, she gets a lot more useful. Unlimited recipes mean she’s there for every “what could I make with this?” moment.

  • Unlimited inventory — the whole shelf, every supplier
  • Unlimited Ellie sessions — she remembers your style
  • COGS — finally know what each pour costs
  • Full mobile · label scanner
Join the beta
Beta: caps lifted, no paid plan yet
Studio
— for the studio with more than one set of hands.
$42/ mo · or $360/yr — two months free

When the studio outgrows one bench. Multiple workspaces, an operator on the floor, and a human in your corner when things get busy.

  • Everything in Maker
  • Team & operator access — roles, permissions, hand-offs
  • Priority support — a real person, same business day
  • Onboarding call & shelf-import help
Join the beta
Beta: caps lifted, no paid plan yet

Teaching a workshop? Running a maker co-op? — write us, we’ll work something out.

04The small print, in plain words

Questions we hear at the workbench.

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Pop into the help center or send Ellie a note — a real human reads them.

Which crafts does Ellie work with? +

Resin and candle making, today — the same pantry, the same recipes, the same wizard, each tuned to how that craft actually works. You pick a craft when you set up a workspace, and you can keep more than one and switch between them. Bath & body (soap) is what’s next on the bench. Want a nudge when it lands? Send us a note and we’ll line you up.

Can I import what I already have in a spreadsheet? +

Yes. Grab the free sample template, fill it in, and upload it as an XLSX workbook (export one from Google Sheets, Numbers or Excel) — Ellie maps the columns for you. The template and export are free on every plan; the bulk import itself is a Maker feature.

Is the wizard accurate, or is it making pigments up? +

Ellie only generates recipes from your real shelf. If she suggests a pigment you don’t own, it’s flagged clearly with a “you’d need one new thing” note and a link to where it’s commonly sold. No hallucinated colorants.

Do I own my recipes? +

Always. Your recipes are yours. We never train models on your data, we don’t sell your shelf to suppliers, and you can export everything as a PDF or XLSX workbook on any plan — including the free one — at any time.

What about offline at the bench? +

It’s on the way — not live yet. The plan: your full shelf and recent recipes cached right on your phone, so you can read a recipe, log a batch, and scan a label without a signal, then sync when you’re back. It’s on our roadmap right alongside Bath & body support, and we’ll shout when it lands.

Can I cancel any time? +

Right now there’s nothing to cancel — Hi, Ellie is in open beta, so the paid plans aren’t billing yet. You get the lifted caps without entering a card. When billing does go live, stopping will be a couple of clicks from Settings, and your data simply drops back to the free tier; nothing is deleted unless you ask us to.

come pour something with us —

Your shelf is waiting. So is Ellie.

Start free. Add your first ten pigments in five minutes. Let the wizard sketch you a recipe before your coffee’s cold.

Start free — no card →See pricing
Ellie