Donna Marshall laughs as she recalls her early love of fossicking for treasures among the trash as a child in the small coastal township of Waimarama, Hawke's Bay.

Donna Marshall in her Tairua home with a handmade sign.

'We used to love going to the dump. Mum and dad would say ‘if you don't behave, you're not going to the dump'. What a difference to now - we're more likely to tell our kids to behave or they won't be getting an ipad!”

We're chatting over a flat white in Donna and partner Matt Hishon's house on Paku mountain, Tairua on the Coromandel. The property overlooks the blue-green of Pauanui Beach in front and layers of native bush on Paku's summit behind them.

It's from here that Donna produces handcrafted signs using recycled weatherboards and skirting boards.

After sourcing them and cutting them, she paints and overlays the signs with clever words before sanding them back to show the deep natural grains of New Zealand native wood.

Her signage hangs in the living room, bathroom and on outside walls and paths of her own home and can be found in the pages of lifestyle magazines, showcasing designer homes around the country.

Donna is among a new wave of entrepreneurial small business owners, able to make a living on the Coromandel doing what they love.

She says she was inspired to set up her business after travelling and surfing through Costa Rica and Puerto Rico where she saw how people ‘make do' with driftwood and found objects to make signs.

She now looks to Pinterest for inspiration, and says despite a glut of cheap Chinese imports there's still a market for original handcrafted pieces that show the natural grain of native wood.

Donna makes the most of her hours when 4-year-old son Zanda is at Tairua Kindergarten to work on the business. Her workshop is under the house next to Matt's design studio. Although her eclectic home showcases her talent for making and displaying art, Donna sells her work through markets and custom orders and has no plans to open a shop just yet.

'Working from home with hours that suit my family, what more can you ask? I don't want any pressure, I didn't come here to make a million dollars, I came to make some petty cash and enjoy life. I think you do work harder having your own business because it all relies on you, but I just love finding things, fossicking while I'm walking on the beach, and selling at markets.”

Buyers will sometimes pick up dozens of pieces from Donna at markets. But the couple's main income stream is from partner Matt, who also works from home on his graphic design business.

A former designer for New Zealand Surfing Magazine, Matt is multi-talented and made the dining table from recycled timbers (a labour of love that took him many months to finish).

He has often been coerced into lugging large lumps of driftwood from nearby beaches for another creation by Donna, but most of the artful treasures around the couple's home are Donna's handy work.

'That was from the dump, that was from the dump, $1, $5, fixed it up…” Donna says as she does a quick inventory of all that she's revived and which now sits in pride of place at home. There are painted side tables, light shades, arty nick-nacks and old suitcases, all contributing to a breezy, coastal style that provides functionality and useful storage.

'If I see drawers for $5 but it's going to cost me $40 to make them useful, I won't do it. I love fossicking, but if I can't get it done in a couple of hours I'm not interested.”

Donna saved and bought her Tairua section after a stint working on super yachts. The section used to be a holiday spot where she parked her kombi surf van (now sold).

The couple built their home a year ago, providing Donna with a blank canvas and more space to exercise her creativity and earn income by turning trash into treasure.