A day in the life...

Have you ever heard that song "Taking care of business" from the 70's ...the words say :

You get up every morning
From your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty
And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be...
Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I've been taking care of business, it's all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime......

Are you tapping your toes yet ? LOL

Well, we are here to tell you, the life of an independant self employed artist is anything but "working at nothing all day" !  and here is how an average day goes for us....
No time clocks to punch...work starts when we get up...

Stacy is up early every day, by 4-5 a.m....I usually sleep until about 6:30...so when I get up he is already covered in wood chips and dust, but the coffee is made :D 

Upon  waking  up, the first few things through my mind are: "how did my finish turn out on the forks from yesterday" , Coffee...," i wonder if we have any messages and sales to answer and pack"....coffeee...."what forks will be  listed, depends on what sold over night..."...so you get the picture of my waking thoughts....here's what happens the rest of the day.....

*check messages on shops and emails. send thank you notes for any overnight sales. Answer questions and request. this can take anywhere from 1-3 hours
*get dressed and make breakfast
*photograph action shots of what will be listed today...photograph the items for the shop, which is 5-10 pictures per item to get good shots. This takes approximately 30-40 minutes.
*Each item has 5 photos that have to be edited and listings that have to be customized to the specific items..this takes 20-40 minutes per listing.
*promote new items that are just listed on social networks throughout the day including treasuries for the treasury team we are on, and i try to make a new  treasury each day...3-4 hours.
*package any items that need to go out today..each box takes about 10-15 mintes to pack, wrap, address with personal notes in each one.
*now its lunch time, try to add a load of laundry in there and play with the dogs for little bit...1 hour
*keep packing until done. If we have 3 boxes a day to pack, sometimes up to 6 this can take up to 2 hours of the day
*in between all of this, answer messages promptly, take custom orders and work out details of them in multiple communications( we love this part , it is so fun to make your dream hair art come to life and get to know you and your hair better!) 3-4 hrs a day...i am up to possibly 10 hours of work at this point
That was My part of the schedule, Stacy is on a completely different track!

Stacys Day...

*cut out forks that are on the schedule for the day, some for shop some for custom orders.
*Take packages to post office once they are all bagged and ready to go
*At least 8-10 steps are covered on each fork that is being made during the day, before it gets to come in for its finish work.
*now its time for dinner and hopefully get the load of laundry to its destination, which doesn't always happen :D

By the time we get to this point,  it's after 6pm , and we are both at our benches working on special designs, decorating forks, doing some custom work and doing a few projects that we have been wanting to make for the fun of it.


"Our average day is 2.5-3.3 sales.....Our average hairfork is $50

Now, that might SOUND like a lot! Holy crap that's like $150/day! Well.. you're heard the phrase, "Well-off and opulent artist," right? No?
How about "starving artist." There's a reason for that.

""Of all the things that go into our hair forks, we actually make very little profit.
Just for fun, let's work backwards from a "reasonable" $30 hair fork as opposed to a "ridiculous" priced at $80. Let's say the wood isn't very high quality or exotic, so it's $7 for a piece that is at least sound.

Etsy charges 20 cents to list an item and then 3.5% of the sale fee. So that'll be $1.25. PayPal will nab another $1.05 (just on the fork, but it'll hit shipping too for more). So we're down to $20.70.

A very, very low overhead fee (which would cover supplies used like sand paper, wear and tear on drill bits and sawblades, as those have to be purchased with the money from sales, electricity, safety equipment like goggles, hearing protection, etc. and whatever else) is 10%, so $3. Now we're at $17.70

Now, the fork itself took 2.5 hours to make because we'll say this is also a very, very basic shape, but the finish is still really nice. Taking pictures, editing the pictures, uploading the pictures, writing the description, filling out the listing and actually listing it, then packing it up, printing postage and taking it to the post office.... I will be VERY generous and say half an hour. This does scale a bit when there's more forks being made/listed/packed at once, but you can only reduce it so far. So 3 hours total for this very basic fork. Right now to divide this out, the fork maker would be making $5.90/hour. The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25.

Minimum wage is often for unskilled/unspecialized labor that requires very little training, and woodworking is not unskilled labor by any part of the imagination. So, honestly, I think expecting an artist who lives off their craft to value their time less than that of minimum wage ridiculous.""

We Would like to send a special thank you to our friend Nightblooming for the graphic and the numbers to compare...As another hair art maker we are in similar situations often and thank you, Nightblooming, for your championing of the self employed artist!

We hope this helps you understand and know that we are doing what we love, and loving what we do while bringing you an heirloom quality hairfork , a wooden hair sculpture!

Much blessings and love to all!

Savings alert!

WEll, we have been doing our new packaging on several packages, mostly trying to send it to repeat customers to get thier take on it, and there may be another benefit to this...less shipping weight= less shipping costs!! THe Postal rates are going up this year, so we are trying to keep our costs and yours as low as possible!!
WE are going to start modifying our shipping fees as we figure out what everything comes to with the new packing ..so keep your eyes open, and we are anxious to hear from those of you who are getting the new packaging , how do you feel about it?!?
We appreciate you all so much!!
Love to you
Kimi & Stacy

Stacy and his 40% discount at the manicurist...

 Here is the story behind the hands of Stacy and how they came to be Grah-Toe Studio.
In 1996 Stacy was working at a cabinet shop, and being part of the tough guys in the group went along with the lax safety equipment that was there. Things like that can make the work easier, but when they need to be there, there is nothing that makes up for that time you saved without them.....He was alone making raised panel doors on a shaper, and no hold downs went along with a dull shaper bit as well. Pushing down and forwrad hard against the dull blade, Stacy's left hand slipped into the bit and became as shavings on the floor with the wood...he grabbed his hand to his chest immediately knowing it was not good, and went next door to get help. The people next door thought he had been shot, as the blood on his shirt and where he was holding his chest was profuse. They came and took him to the hospital and he called me at work. I went to the hospital to meet him and take care of all the stuff that gets unfinished when accidents happen. I arranged to go make sure his vehicle was safe, and that he could get his medications and get home and not be alone after wards. I don't know if you realize this, but there are actually surgeons who just do hands, and there aren't many of them. We waited a lifetime in the ER, as all 3 of the hand surgeons were unavailbale and the next one who could would be over. THe fingers were gone on the left hand, in an arc the shape of the blade but ragged. They needed several surgeries to make the skin, bone, nail beds that were partial all liveable.

Many of our Church friends came over and gave us support, hugs, and offered to do anything we needed, they were fabulous. After all the surgeries and the healings, Stacy actually went back to work very quickly, and  needed to be doing something. He worked there 2 more years and then he went to school for retraining into another field, dental lab tech. Now, Stacy was always really good with his hands artistically, and this made him more determined to be able to do even more than he did "with all those fingers in the way".

We had some friends who challenged him to carve one of his wooden chains in a toothpick...that he did, and has done several times now. WE featured a picture of the one we have here on our blog in the past year. Then he started to make tools to help him hold things better to work on them smaller and smaller, and the lab training was going well. AS an aside, after his first few weeks at dental lab school he suffered a heart attack and had bypass sugery..and began school all over that fall...ALl this time, we both wanted to do our art full time, but there was just no way to quit our jobs and do that so we continued on , i was a dental assistant and he was in school and we both loved what we did, and joked that we worked to pay for our habit, which was buying wood and stone and clay to make things!

And so as to keep you interested a few of the standard jokes about his hands involve his discount with the manicurists, his changing jobs and going into worldwide communications..shortwave...that his sign language has suffered terribly as he now mumbles when he signs, and  that God is good all the time, even when you get 40% off at the manicurists...

We have lots to tell in between here and there and how we became full time Grah-Toe Studios and we look forward to sharing the full story with you.....we would love to hear from you and know what you would like to know next?!? or if you have any questions for Stacy, he would love to answer them for you!

We appreciate everyone of you, and this is being told only to share a bit of ourselves with our wonderful customers, not to elicit any type of sympathy as we know that God has a plan in everything, and Stacy has excelled even without a few of his fingers! We hope you  will leave us comments and questions. We look forward to sharing more of our story as it comes!

Have you found your soulmate?

I have ! My husband is also my best friend and soul mate! We have been doing art and life together for over 13 years.


We have a shop on artfire and on etsy and are delving into the world of handmade, aiming to create full time! Most of our life we were working to "support our habit" i.e. buying rocks,beads,wood from all over the country when we would travel.


Now, we are opening our studio and inviting the world to enjoy the creations made from inspiration and love!


We see colors and shapes that inspire us from the shape of snowflakes (See Stacy's lovely wooden snowflakes grahtoestudio.etsy.com and grahtoestudio.artfire.com) to the color combinations in the rock layers of thousands of years.


We wander the lands of NE Utah on the weekends(not so much in the winter:) and find rocks, fossils,and sometimes just peace in watching the antelope grazing.


My prayer for you all is that you have the blessing of finding and spending time with your soul mate ,it fills the heart in a way that is indescribeable! Love and blessings~ Kim