Today we’d like to introduce you to Pat Martin.
Hi Pat, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My twin sister and I were born (double oops) into a creative family of six. Among us, we painted, sculpted, sketched, sewed, knitted, photographed, carpentered, media/music productions, brick garden beds and so on!
My twin lives in our hometown of Charleston WV and I have been based on the west coast of Florida since the late 80’s. My culinary creative husband, David and I brought two beautiful ‘creative’ boys into the world! Our oldest son Chris is in the welding/fabrication business and our youngest, Austin is a sea captain. Both young men can pretty much build/fix anything that is needed. Our investment in Lego’s paid off early on!
Our little company began in the late 90’s FROM Bits & Pieces…we started with mosaics, then we picked up the love of the ‘coastal strands’, which we titled them ‘Rodanthe’s’! These shelly, glass stringers were inspired from the 2010 Nicholas Sparks film, ‘The Nights in Rodanthe’. In the film, this Outer Banks beach house had some unique seashell/starfish/sea glass strands hanging throughout the house. The internet was still young, we could not find anything about these strands, who made them or how to make them so we took a stab at it and started creating our own versions of them….At first we gave them away as gifts to friends and family then one day we connected with a new Anna Maria Island shop owner….which then led us to consigning in boutiques / gift shops in Anna Maria, Bradenton, Sarasota etc. as well as shops in Charleston WV and Bethlehem PA.
During the holidays of 2019, we saw a social media post from the owners of the actual ‘Inn at Rodanthe’. The Inn owners had posted pictures of their recent updates to the interior of their vacation rental home to reflect the décor from the movie. They had just about everything from the film except for… the seashell curtains! We reached out and sent a few pics of our creations to see if they would be interested in including ‘our’ strands within their iconic home. The owners responded within minutes and were super excited to work with us. This communication led to an onsite meeting at The Inn which led to an agreement for a custom curtain for their Atlantic beach-front windows. Our Rodanthe curtain was installed in the spring of 2020. Due to COVID we were not able to install the 80 plus strands ourselves. We shipped them up for the owners to hang. Later in the fall of 2020, we met a group of girlfriends for a girl’s trip in Rodanthe and enjoyed our time at The Inn at Rodanthe!
By early 2021, we discovered concrete and cement could be fun to create with…..we started with small mini shapes, hearts, mermaids, turtles etc….then coasters, trays, book ends, etc Today, we are still bringing in new pieces and designs, weekly!
But, back to April of 2021 …. Our son Chris was in a welding accident, it was a bad one!
It’s the phone call every parent fears … Chris was intubated in his ambulance on the way to the Bradenton Burn Trama hospital….We thought at first we were just dealing with 2nd degree burns all over his upper body but as the days moved forward…his internal injuries became the focus with multi organ failure, fevers, infections, fighting to come off of the ventilator due to blood pressure spikes….Chris had inhaled the blast! Every day was a new challenge but when they told us they didn’t know what else to do for him….we kicked in to gear for the need of MORE prayers…for Chris….We started making small heart shaped stones out of concrete, adding crushed glass and seashells, then we added Chris’ name to the back of each prayer stone and got them into the hands of every one we could. We shipped them to our far away family and friends and put them into the hands of our doctors, nurses, IV tecs, security guards, cafeteria peeps, lobby folks, maintenance and even the hospital chapel. Because of Covid we only had 5 hours a day to spend with Chris…it became very therapeutic for us to be creating thousands of these since we could do nothing else but wait and pray.
The shops where we sell our collections were handing them to customers asking them to please PRAY for CHRIS!
This was the birth of the Prayer Stones.
One month to the day of the accident, Chris woke up, on his own! Just the day before we were told to start looking into long term care facilities as no one knew what to expect at that point! The word Miracle was said and heard a lot after this! He did not just wake up …he woke up with his brain intact!
Today Chris has a few minor souvenirs to live with but it’s his constant reminder of how blessed and lucky he really is! He is back to living a normal happy life with his girlfriend Kelly, back at work, back at welding and he still keeps a prayer stone close by!
This year, 2025 we have reached production at over 100,000 prayer stones created and deployed!
We still do not charge for them for people in need of prayer.
We have grown our concrete line considerably these past few years. The sales from our ever- changing collections helps us to continue to do what we promised to do, Pray it forward!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth for the most part, Chris’ accident helped steer us further into the cement/concrete world with an actual purpose. The prayer stones have been very popular, I am sure it helps that they are free and we had to figure out where to draw the line on that. When requests arrive, we are looking for the right reasons…a person with an illness or accident, depression, loneliness etc. to anyone just needing a little lift or prayer, then we will certainly help them with our prayer stones. We even have them for our four leggers. Most people reach out to request the prayer stones from our website or they find us through word of mouth, sometimes we just send them when we see a need!
We also offer ‘festive’ prayer stones in different sizes…for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, for these we charge a minimal price. Everything can be found on our website and in the awesome shops we are currently in, based in Charleston WV and the Bradenton FL area.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Currently, I guess our Prayer Stones! Also, we really do not see much concrete art out there. We constantly chang up our collections, if we get bored, our customers will too. We pretty much recycle/upcycle everything we work on to create our one of kind pieces…mostly from broken treasure! That is actually how we came up with our FB&P brand name….everything we create comes ‘FROM’ Bits and Pieces of something else! We even throw it out there from time to time… YOU Break? We take! Our friends and the shops we sell in always save their ‘breaks’ for us which in turn helps us with our bottom line of our free prayer stones.
We LOVE our friends and family, especially the clumsy ones! (Andrew)
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Still learning…ha but this is our own little company and we constantly have to remind ourselves that we now get to DO WHAT WE LOVE and LOVE WHAT WE DO! We both learned a lot from our previous corporate careers…which helped us stay balanced with fun and the act of being a professional, holding on to strong skills of organization, communications, marketing, finance, PR, all of it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://frombitsandpieces.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/from_bits_and_pieces/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/From-Bits-Pieces-116271081793889
