How Remarkable Markers Began.

I’ve always been interested in healthcare since I was small. My mother was an emergency department nurse and my favourite thing was to ask her about what she had seen that day at work when she came home. I loved hearing all of the stories about people who needed to be seen in ED and how they were treated, even before I was old enough to really understand what many of the ailments were. I never imagined that I would ever start a business, especially nothing like Remarkable Markers. 

Previous study and Nerding out.

I studied nursing after high school and took a patient to CT when I was on placement. I realised then that imaging was the place for me. So after I graduated I applied for a masters in medical imaging and I felt like I’d finally found my place in the world. I was absolutely obsessed, I wanted to learn all the things!

In 2012 I was in my first year and I sewed together a pretend person that was the same height as me, I made some pretend X-Ray plates (CR not DR) and practiced my patient positioning with my home made ‘patient’. I just couldn’t get enough of X-Ray.

A sheet layed out on the ground that I traced around the shape of my body to create a 'patient'.

Then I sewed it and stuffed it and drew my anatomical landmarks on the outside, wrote flashcards for myself so I would be able to learn the details of each view and tested myself on the positioning and the theory in case I got it in an exam. 

Improvising with a ‘sponge’ in between the patient’s knees was one of my favourite nerdy touches, thanks Mum for letting me use the dining room table!

On my first placement, my nickname was ‘geek-o-saurus’ and honestly, they weren’t wrong.

The puzzle of making my own X-Ray Markers.

As a new grad, I worked with a girl called Bec, and she had a teeny tiny pink X-Ray marker and another one that was like a typewriter font. I wanted some SO badly!

I spent hours scouring the internet for some that I could purchase for myself, and the only ones I could find were in the USA and shipping cost more than the markers! So I made the decision to try to make them myself.

I went to Bunnings and bought some resin, it smelled terrible! And was yellow. So I didn’t use it. I eventually found a company on eBay that sold resin for sealing surfboards and I purchased some.

Then I had to work out how to make the L and Rs. I went to every single jewellery shop in Melbourne looking for a pendant that had just an L or R on it that I could use. I think Top Shop was the final winner, I’m not sure if they even exist anymore. I was SO excited that I finally found them. They weren’t in any fancy font but it was a good start. I used silicone and made moulds of the L’s and R’s I had collected.

I bought some pill boxes that I thought might make good moulds and I was almost good to go.

I just needed some lead.

My mum had heard of a scrap metal place near her house, and we drove there and purchased a roll of lead and took it home.

I set everything I had collected out on Mum's barbecue that was old and never got used.

I cut the lead up with tin snips and I had bought a propane canister with a blow torch on the end. I put the chopped up lead into an ice cream scoop and melted it down. Once it was melted, I poured it into the silicone moulds and swiped the back of the scoop over the top to get rid of any excess.

I want to make it very clear, I DO NOT recommend doing this.

I made sure I used a mask, although in hindsight, it probably wasn’t enough. Luckily the lead phase of this was short lived.

I eventually was able to make enough good letters to set in my resin pill boxes and my first set of markers were made!

Some of my first markers, I still have some of these glitters in my shop! But I definitely have less bubbles in my resin these days. Turns out warm water makes a huge difference. Who knew!

Collecting enough letters to make a batch of markers. Hand poured and filed down with a metal file.

Eventually I realised that solder also showed up on X-ray which made the Liquid Metal so much easier to control into the mould. I would solder them down into the moulds and then once they had set I would file the edges to make them look nicer.

My soldering setup, making things so much faster and easier.

Some of my friends at work wanted me to make them some, so I did, and things have continued to grow from there.

As I got better at making letters, I began to make them in batches and file them down so that I could use them. This is me, enjoying a cup of tea at the kitchen bench and casually filing down some soldered letters. As you do.

After a few years of this, I found I was not looking forward to my clinic work as much as I used to. Patients that were waiting in the fracture clinic had been there for hours as they were all set to arrive at the same time, and the waiting room would be full. As clinic progressed, the patients would become progressively grumpy as their wait times were so long. This got me down so much, as I really wanted to provide a good experience for my patients, and it was so difficult to do this when they were already so mad at you for making them wait.

Something that always cheered me up a bit or made it a bit easier for me to go and get the next patient was deciding which markers I was going to use for the next X-ray. It made it a bit more fun to choose the marker I was going to use, new sparkly pink ones I had just made, or my good luck one that had helped me get a tricky shot in trauma a few weeks ago.

It made a hard day a bit easier, and sometimes it was a good ice breaker with the patients when I put down a blingy marker next to their hand and they asked what it was and commented on how pretty it was.

One of the girls I worked with talked me into putting them on Etsy and creating an instagram. I remember my friend Janine explaining to me that I should use hashtags and it took me SO long to understand why I needed to use them.

I finally made my first sale in 2015! I was so excited, and I will always remember my first customer. I ended up working with her a few years later! Remarkable Markers was a real thing and a real person had purchased some of my X-Ray Markers! I just couldn't believe it.

And here we are about ten years after I made my first set. I still live and breathe it, hopefully making the Markers more Remarkable year in and year out, but now I’m more about accessorising medical imaging rather than pressing the button. 

Although I do miss it a lot.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I still can’t believe this began with a blow torch and an Icecream Scoop.

Sarah Xx