Ms Buchanan, who attended Creswick Primary School and Ballarat High School, will pitch her creative skills against 12 other contestants in the new show Making It Australia on Channel 10.

"I've always enjoyed making things but this will take it to a new level," Ms Buchanan said.

"It's a very satisfying thing to be able to create something from scratch. I find it very therapeutic to be able to set my mind to a task, problem solve then create an object. It's actually really beneficial for anxiety, it's a great distraction, art therapy."

Although she started out as a cook, her boyfriend at the time did a theatre course at Ballarat University and when he began touring with a show, Ms Buchanan became stage manager and operated the video during the show.

After the relationship ended she was trying to decide what she wanted to do. "I really like theatre, but was always an artist at heart, always making stuff and drawing, so I tapped theatre and art in Google and came up with a prop making course at NIDA and that's where I learned to make stuff out of whatever."

And it's that broad-ranging skill of making something out of nothing that she hopes will carry her through to the end of the competition and its $100,000 prize.

"I learned a lot of different techniques - carpentry, welding, sculpting, mould making and more and when I left NIDA we started a business making small props for small theatre shows, props for television commercials, event furniture then it started to get bigger making stuff for other artists, for Sydney's VIVID festival, and big sculptures like you'd see at White Night."

COVID slowed business down dramatically but with television production and commercials still going ahead there have been small jobs keeping her busy from her NSW home - and then along came Making It Australia.

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"I feel really privileged I was allowed to be on the show. I've done a lot of stuff and a lot of challenging stuff ... and this is possibly the most challenging yet fun thing I've done in my entire life."

Making It Australia starts Wednesday September 15 at 7.30pm on 10 and 10 Play on Demand.

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