Check Out Shawna Epps’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawna Epps.

Shawna, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Shine Your Heart started in 2008 as a fun little business making yoga bags. I was in teacher training at Corepower Yoga and wanted to make a friend a yoga bag and when I did someone else wanted one and then the yoga studio ordered 10 of them. After those sold immediately, they ordered 40 and then ordered enough for all of their locations to have a few bags. It was kind of a synchronistic event that was very clear I was meant to follow. At the time I was doing marketing and branding for various clients and I wanted to work in a different industry so Shine Your Heart kind was like a side gig.
I needed resources like manufacturing etc so I went to Magic in Vegas where I met a music artist who needed some marketing. We started working together and because that was where I really wanted to be, I pushed Shine Your Heart off to the side. It was always there doing stuff while I was exploring these other things but I wasn’t giving my full focus to it. After about eight years, my artist decided he wanted to leave the industry so I came back to Shine Your Heart and gave it my all. I found someone willing to help me get it off the ground again and opened up a retail store in downtown Long Beach. I had added vegan leather handbags to the yoga bag mix and then Covid hit. This required all of us to pivot and I did. While we were in lockdown I taught myself how to marble fabric and that started this new journey that I find myself on now. I started marbling fabric for bags and shoes and hand painting fabrics that were turned into beautiful bags etc.
Then in 2021 my mom got sick and I closed my store down to take care of her and once again Shine Your Heart had to wait. After nearly three years I came back to this business having to start over one more time. I wanted to do more than just make yoga bags so in 2025 I went through a total restructuring of the business and began to offer the marbled fabrics as panels that any designer could purchase for their project as well as those textiles being turned into soft goods like pillows, framed wall art, table top settings, napkins etc and runners for tables and beds. This also allows me to work with more color which I love. Each client can choose from what I have in inventory which I can produce into soft goods or can commission me to develop their color palette and marbled a textile for them. I now serve boutiques, showrooms, interior designers, fashion designers, developers who manage luxury properties and hospitality.
I am happy with the evolution of Shine Your Heart because it reflects a part of me out in the world.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. Some of the struggles of having orders and then those orders sort of drying up and not really knowing how to replace that income is one of the biggest and I think as a small business I wear so many hats like many of us do which stretches me so thin. There are so many things that always need to be done with the operations so to sit and explore the marketing or figure out the analytical side of things like SEO and keywords etc has been one of the biggest challenges.
This has also caused a lot of doubt about myself and if this is the right place for me to be because it seems like if it was aligned things would be easier, right? I am not sure about that. I don’t really know the answer but I do know that if you really want it, even when it is hard, you will get it. If you only kind of want it and you try really hard, the results reflect that too. So the business sort of reflects you back to yourself. This was a big reason I reorganized because while i loved making yoga bags, I felt so trapped, like there was a part of me that wanted to be seen but had no stage. Now things feel free and expansive and like anything is possible. I think that is how you measure it.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have a BA in Graphic Design and Interactive Multimedia. I love creating. I love working with my hands and mostly, I love color. There is something about color that activates something inside of me I can’t explain and I don’t feel anywhere else. I have won awards for logos I have designed and enjoy graphic design but that also makes me feel trapped.
I love to paint but it’s more like expressive painting. Allowing whatever wants to come through in that moment to come through and I don’t argue. It is like a portal opening up to allow my inner self to speak.
I specialize in water marbling fabrics. It is an ancient art that started in Japan on paper called Suminagashi where ink is floated on water, the ink is raked or swirled and paper is laid on top to capture the design. You may recognize inside old books on the inside covers—that is the art used for those papers.
I decided I wanted to use fabrics and make things like jackets, pillows and panels for framing.
I think what sets me apart is my courage to play with color. For me it isn’t courage, it is like drinking a cold glass of water on a hot day. I feel like “finally I can breathe” but the world isn’t ready for that much color. Even now in the clients and sales I do for designers and customers, people are drawn to contemporary and neutral colors and those are beautiful and have a place, I do enjoy working with those but my heart will always be in the color.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I don’t believe in luck.
I believe in synchronicity and alignment. Everything outside of you is a mirror and is reflecting what is happening in your mind inside. Your thoughts create your reality. I am still learning how to manage the things outside of me that I don’t prefer and how to find what is inside of me creating that so I can change it. It is really about your beliefs and what you tell yourself over and over. That repetition becomes part of your subconscious thinking or autopilot thinking and governs 95% of your unconscious thoughts each day. Every thought has an emotion (energy in motion) and that energy has a frequency and that frequency defines what you attract to you or away from you. Like attracts like. We are all magnetic energy beings.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alwaysshineyourheart.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/alwaysshineyourheart
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/alwaysshineyourheart
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shineyourheart
• Other: https://Pinterest.com/alwaysshineyourheart

Image Credits
I am the owner of all the images.