A sprinkling of sawdust Wooed by wood, Cedarella founder takes pride in handcrafted designs By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026

Marina Bulan is the founder of Cedarella, a two-year-old venture that turns out eye-catching wood products such as jewelry, kitchen decor, children’s toys and, most recently, metre-high outdoor planters that double as home street-number indicators.

Ahead of immigrating to Winnipeg a decade ago from their native Russia, Bulan and her partner thought it would be prudent to conduct some research on their soon-to-be new home, a city they knew next to nothing about.

Imagine their surprise as they were viewing the 2007 surrealist film My Winnipeg, which comically blends historical facts about our burg with what Winnipeg-born writer/director Guy Maddin has termed “mystical hypothesizing.”

(For instance, there is no proof that, as reported in the award-winning flick, Winnipeg is the sleepwalking capital of the world, and that residents keep keys to their former abodes on their person in the event they turn up there during a bout of somnambulism.)

“We assumed it was a documentary and were both like, wow, Winnipeg is such a crazy place,” Bulan chuckles, seated in her clean-as-a-whistle garage workshop. “I mean, our first winter here, we half-expected to see dead horses’ heads frozen in the river, like it shows in the movie.”

Bulan, now in her early 50s, grew up in Rostov-on-Don, a port city of about one million in southern Russia. At age 18, she moved to St. Petersburg, where she earned a master’s degree in chemistry at St. Petersburg State University.

Following that accomplishment, she studied graphic design, a field she concluded was more to her liking.

Bulan met her partner, who also has a design background, in the early 2000s. They eventually opened their own design studio in St. Petersburg, and were still running it in 2014 when the Russian army invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, about a six-hour drive from Bulan’s hometown.

Because of what was occurring in Russia — with the war, yes, but also in regards to the Putin government’s negative stance on LGBTTQ+ rights — the two of them decided it wasn’t the country they wanted to live in any longer, Bulan says.

They commenced the emigration process, with a dream of moving to Canada or the United States, and became thrilled in 2016 when they were informed they’d been accepted to come to Manitoba.

It wasn’t long before she caught on with a downtown advertising agency, Bulan says, adding she’d smile whenever her new co-workers relayed horror stories about how frigid it gets in Winnipeg come December and January. Freezing temperatures aren’t something that “would ever scare off a Russian,” she’d tell them.

In 2023, by which time she had been promoted from graphic designer to design director, Bulan did some soul-searching, ultimately determining that a change of scenery was in order.

“I wouldn’t say I was burned out so much as after 20 years, I wanted to try something different. And one of the great things about Canada is that here, you can do whatever it is you feel like doing,” she says.

“Whatever” turned out to be a 10-month cabinetry course at Red River College Polytechnic. After all, she’d always enjoyed fiddling around with lumber, she reasoned, so why not fine-tune her skills in that department and let the wood chips fall where they may?

In December 2023 — her fourth month at Red River — Bulan’s instructor was discussing different species of wood. At some point he referenced cedar, which caused what Bulan laughingly calls the advertising side of her brain to come up with the fairy-tale-ish moniker, “Cedarella.”

She later shared the pun with her teacher, who looked at her and uttered, “That’s genius. You have to register it as a business name, whether you have a business or not.”

She heeded his advice. Twelve months later, Cedarella made its official debut at a Christmas craft show at Red River Exhibition Place, near Assiniboia Downs. There, Bulan and her partner, who assists with sales and marketing, showed off an array of handcrafted holiday ornaments.

As has become their trademark, each decoration consisted of five varieties of wood — cherry, walnut, white oak, maple and cedar — that had been cut to size and painstakingly bonded together to create a patterned look.

(Not only did they donate a portion of their sales to the Canadian Red Cross for Ukrainian relief, by then they were also offering a spare bedroom in their North Kildonan home to Ukrainian refugees.)

Encouraged by their success that weekend, Bulan began thinking of other things she could bring to market.

That led to the purchase of a computer numerical control (CNC) machine, an automated device she’d learned to operate at Red River that makes complex, precision cuts into wood or other material based on pre-programmed instructions.

“It wasn’t that big a stretch to go from computer design to preparing files for the CNC machine,” Bulan says, pulling up a file for an angled wine rack she is currently developing for a couple in British Columbia.

“What’s great about the CNC is that if somebody requests a custom piece — maybe something with their business name on it — I can do a three-dimensional mock-up of what they have in mind, and make all the necessary changes before ever involving a piece of wood.”

Iain Scott is a real-estate agent for Sutton Group. Scott got to know Bulan from his days in the printing business, and was intrigued two years ago when he saw posts on Instagram announcing her new venture.

“And then when I read that she had a CNC machine, I reached out, asking, ‘Can you do this?’” Scott says, referring to a charcuterie board he intended to give to clients as a thank-you gift that would be stamped with his personal logo on the underside.

“I don’t want to oversell it — I already had a great deal of faith in Marina, from work we’d done together in the past — but I was still completely blown away by what she came back with.”

Scott says Bulan initially crafted 20 boards for him, each with a set of shallow indentations that make it simple to divide foodstuffs and dipping-sauce containers.

The finished products, made of repurposed elm wood, were such a hit with his customers that he quickly placed an order for 20 more.

“Normally when you pick up a (charcuterie) board, it’s flat and you maybe struggle to hold onto it, only hers have a gripping edge that works like handles… they’re very thoughtfully done,” Scott says.

“I have shared her work with other realtors (and) it’s only a matter of time until they enlist her services, too.”

As mentioned off the top, Bulan’s latest creation is a street-address marker/planter, meant for a home’s front yard. The product sparked interest from city dwellers and cottage-country folk, alike, when she introduced it this spring on their website.

“I built the prototype for our place, mainly to be sure it would survive the winter,” she says. “The first one had painted sides for contrast but after the paint started flaking from the cold, I taught myself how to char wood with a propane torch, which is the method I now use.

“People can order any digits they want, plus I’ll engrave their street name on the numbers, as well.”

Besides the monetary rewards, what Bulan, who has since returned to graphic design on a freelance basis (one of her clients was the Winnipeg Sea Bears basketball team), appreciates most about Cedarella is that it grants her the opportunity to create something tangible.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to graphic design nowadays, it’s almost all digital. You’re still proud of what you’ve accomplished, but it’s not like before, when you could hold a newspaper or magazine in your hands and admire your work,” she says.

“With wood, however, it’s right there in front of you. You can look at it when you’re finished and go, ‘Wow, I made that.’”

Cedarella will be a registered vendor at the Scattered Seeds Craft Market, Oct. 16-18, at Red River Exhibition Park.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca