a Hair Journey...

SO, i have been reading The Hobbit..again...:D and thinking about journeys...

A hair journey...you may not think you are on one, but you are!! our life is a journey and your hair has been with you since you got here!! hopefully you love your hair, but most of us have gone through stages of love/hate/like/divorce with our hair and back again.....i wanted to share a little about my hair journey with you!!
i actually had my hair extremely short until i was about 22 years old, and when i started to let it grow out i realized, i have curly hair!!  my curls were long and loopy so they didn't show up until my hair was about to my  chin, and that was long for me!!  there are many childhood stories and hair battles that i could share, but for today i am sticking to this time line :D several times i grew my hair out to about the middle of my back, but it was so thick and heavy i couldn't find anything to do with it, anything that would hold it, and so i would cut it, either shorter or layer it. Temporarily i liked it and it was fun, but it wasn't what i wanted and it was frustrating!! i wanted long hair!! so i finally discovered a long hair community meeting place on line and realized there were things to hold long thick hair called hair forks!! not many people were making them and so we decided to make our own version of them, and i was in love!! I decided to grow my hair until it stopped, or got to its terminal length. That is the hair journey i am on right now!

 This picture is my hair, about a year after i started to grow out my last layered hair cut. my curls are very subdued as we were living in an arid climate,and they all but went away while we lived out there! it was so strange, i actually had to curl my hair, and found ways to do it without heat so there was minimal damage to my hair and beautiful results too.

This picture is about a year later, still trying to get the layers out and trimming as the "point" in my hair hemline got too severe for me . During this time i was also quite ill and on some not very nice medications that made me lose quite a bit of my hair. Thankfully i had very thick hair, so losing half of it made it seem very thin to me, but normal to most other people. i still had to use a hair fork to put it up and it was fun learning new updos as i changed lengths.
all along the way there was support from the long hair group, and i felt like such a short haired person there, but i was so glad i could grow hair and that it was still there.

Many of the updos that you can do at shoulder length hair, you can not do once your hair gets to the middle of your back, and so its an ever changing menu of what can be done, what updos i am aiming at and trying to learn how to do . This is a fun and challenging part of my hair journey!!
I will continue to share more again, but for now, where are you in your hair journey? do you love your hair? do you have goals or are you happy where you are?!?!  we would love to hear your hairy stories!!!
and just for some fun, here are some updo videos for you that are for shorter hair, to start with!!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtVXOCtezRc&list=PLKnzSRSefynkzY-T9LLDO8rXDyxjjEusU&index=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-K9CidKTfA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfikMsYtge4
Have a great week, and love your hair!!  check this out if you are interested in a great group of support for growing or maintaining healthy hair!you don't have to have long hair or even want to grow your hair longer than it is to be a part of this community!
http://www.untamedtresses.com/content/

New Dymond Wood Limited Edition Hair Forks!

Hey everyone!! well, the New Years announcements are late but here they are!!

We will be offering limited edition Dymond wood hair forks this year!! we will not be able to take custom orders for colors, possibly for sizes though. This wood has been very requested and we finally decided to give it a try and the results are spectacular!

Because of our method of making hair forks and the sizes of wood we need, this wood is quite costly and hard to find for our needs. We are not going to be able to stock all the colors or even more than one at a time, as we can only find large and thick enough pieces very sporadically. Most workers of this wood use turning blanks or very thin pieces, and as our fans know, our forks don't fit into those categories at all! :D To get our classic shapes and these extraordinary patterns we need quite thick and large pieces, and they are expensive and hard to find.


We will let you know on our Facebook page as new colors and forks are going to be available, but one color now might be the last time we see it!! so these are going to be grab while you can forks!!

Another thing we are changing is how we take custom orders. We are only going to be taking CO requests by email or on FB, not through etsy or artfire. This will help eliminate lost messages and having to spend so much time hunting for messages daily!

We look forward to many beautiful hair forks, new updos and special requests in a more timely and organized manner! We send out many apologies for the last month as we have both been ill, and it seems many people all over the globe are having quite a bad flu season. We are praying for a healthy new year for all of us, so that we can all enjoy our locks, grow them ever longer, and always keep them in a beautiful updo with lovely handmade hair art lovingly holding them in place :D

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to message us on FB, or on email through our website comments and requests page!!
http://www.grahtoestudio.com/contact-us.html

 we appreciate any input you have, as always, and we adore your custom requests and thrive on them!!
much love to you all and happy,healthy and prosperous 2013 for all!

New Year New Joys!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

We had big plans for a new years announcement, and like so many others we have been bombarded with a nasty flu bug LOL...that sort of put us back a a bit, but we are on the way up and the new announcements will be a few days late , but coming right up!! i can tell you a few new things are happening with the custom order procedure  , and we have a new product to introduce too! we hope you are all going to love it!

We would like to share a goal with you for this year. We would like to get more people who think they can't grow their hair long to our shop!! we know that when you have very thick or what seems to be unruly hair, you just tend to cut it, even when you want to grow it long. Hair forks saved my hair and they can save yours too!! there IS hope for thick long hair! you can have it up without headaches, without breaking everything you try to put it up with!!  Throw out the plastic jaw clips that dig into the scalp and break your hair!! Try a new updo, and try our wood or antler hair forks!!
We enjoy getting to know you and your hair before we recommend the right fork for you and your lifestyle, and we take the time to do that as well as to make them heirloom quality!

If you didn't know about our  F.O.G. program (friend of Grah-Toe) here it is again! When you send someone to us and they tell us you referred them, they get 10% off their first purchase and you get a $5 credit!  so lets see how many people we can help save their hair this year!! WOOT!

We appreciate all our clients so very much,and look forward to much growth for your hair this year, as well as to making exciting new hair art for your gorgeous locks!!  sending you all love, health and prosperity wishes for this new year!!♥