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!!♥

Avalon Tusk Hair Forks

Hello fellow long hair lovers!!

 We have a name for our newest hair fork design, the Avalon Tusk! the above picture is one in holly wood in action. The picture below is a 3 prong version in Spalted Pecan wood.

 We are making this fork in 2 tine pairs, 3 prongs will be available in the shop in a variety of sizes, and 4 prongs will be on special order only.

 Having an extra prong or 2 on the inside of your very large updo , as well as along the head, is a great help in holding lots of hair!!  This brilliant design by Stacy also adds a little extra volume to your updo without adding pull.

 We are very proud to offer our newest creations to you in our Artfire and Etsy studio shops !!!

 As always, we welcome requests and custom orders, and look forward to the ideas you will all be coming up with for this hair fork topper, we know we have lots of ideas and they are coming as fast as we can make them! they will have carved toppers, inlaid stones and marbles, and all kinds of fun things!
The holidays are coming up fast too, and we offer gift certificates if you don't know what your favorite long haired friend needs!
Also, a new feature on Artfire, some items have a comment for coupon button, its an opportunity to get a little extra off our new great prices!!
sending out love to you all, and may your hair grow ever longer!!

Sizes and Names and Woods, Oh MY!

Happy Saturday Everyone!! its snoring here, meaning its raining and snowing all at once, i hope its better where you are LOL!!

We have had many questions on our sizes and names of styles of hair forks , so i am going to try and give a visual reference here. The pictures are of a couple different styles, with 4 sizes in each picture. 

 This picture is our Mermaids Tail Hair Fork. It is a 2 prong fork, and from left to right we show our original size, which is more for dreadlocks, or Extreme long thick hair. It is 7 inch FP length in this picture. We can use the tops of most of them to make any length of tines, except on the micros which are not in the pictures.

 This is our Wave style hair fork, and it comes in 2, 3,4,5, prongs. we can also make this with wider or narrower tops and different length tines, within the strength of the wood.

This picture shows my hand holding the original size wave to give a size reference. The topper on this one is close to 4 inches across. 

I did not have a Threnody in our original size here to make a picture . That style is the one with the asymmetrical wavy top. The Jugendstil is the carved petals , and comes in 2 prong or 3 prong. We also make a cyclops, which most of our micros are shaped after. 
we also make a scooped moon top on some of the Mermaids tail tines, and we have just introduced the Dune fork. This fork is not bigger than the Threnody topper, but in the pictures it must look bigger as many of you have commented on it! we are making it in a lilli and mini lilli size as well! 

We hope this has helped, and we will get more pictures for you and be glad to answer any questions you have about our sizes, shapes or custom orders! you can find us on Artfire, Etsy, and Facebook.

New 2012 Designs are coming..#1 Dune!

Happy New Year Everyone!! 

 Welcome to 2012, and in honor of a new year we have designed a few new items that will be coming out this month...the  first one is a new hair fork we are naming Dune!

This is a carved top that has an elemental twist in it, featuring a small area on the back as well that gives movement to the piece. Each wood is going to look different, and here we have started with 3 woods.

 The wood on the left is new to our studio, African Satin Wood. It is a pale creamy yellow with lots of chatoyance and wave. The middle wood is also new, Mun Ebony. It has dark green to black with golden tan colors in the grain. Stunningly beautiful in person. The grain patterns vary and some are quite spectacular!

 The last wood pictured is Maple wood. a classic that never goes out of style!

 This is the satin wood in action, these will be available in smaller sizes, this is a lilli size fork.

 The maple wood in action...

The mun ebony wood in action.

We look forward to unveiling our next new creation very soon, and hope that you will enjoy and soon be wearing a Dune piece of hair art in your updo !

Family Circle Magazine Featured our Snowflakes!

WE are so honored to share with you, our handmade wooden snowflake ornaments are featured in the Family Circle Magazine, December issue, page 28 !! on Page 190 is the buying guide with all the information to find the items in the magazine.

We hope that you get a chance to take a peek at the issue,  its also got lots of decorating ideas as well as recipes for the holidays! we made extra snowflakes this year !! here is the article too!

http://www.familycircle.com/holiday/christmas/decorations/backyard-holiday-decorating/

NEW Action Updo Video!

I know it has been far too long, and Time flies!! Fall is over, winter is beginning and we have a new video to share with you!! my hair has reached a new length and i needed a new action picture updo, so i came up with this! Hope you have fun with it, and i promise to be posting more very soon!!

New video on Curly Koa wood flash and glow!

We decided that the Curly Koa wood merited a video! Its flash and glow can absolutely NOT be captured in pictures, at all. and so here it is!
we hope it gives you a captivating sense of the woods depth and character. All Curly Koa woods look different, some have colors in them including black and white, and some stay closer to the golden hues of the regular koa, which also glows, by the way!

Been too long, Now the Cthulu is loose

WEll my friends, followers and fans, we sincerely apologize for the long delay between posts here..this summer has been a crazy one for us in so many ways...and i am sure many of you are having just as much going on!

We are trying to get our requested forks made. We are just 2 people, working out of our own little studio and doing the very best we can to maintain quality, and learn how to work quantity into that, but it doesn't seem that the two go together. We would rather send you quality and have you wait a bit longer. Thank you all for your patience and understanding through losing a pet, taking a few days off and having several dental procedures that have really been a bump in our road.

 On a different note we have had a lot of questions about our fork sizes! and if i was as good with photo shop as Nightblooming :D i would make a graph! but, i am not, and she is just as busy, so here is the explanation of the sizes in our studio.
WE started out with our original size forks, which for most people were too large. We based them on my head and hair, and i have a big head, ..no really, physically,its big! so we started to shrink our patterns as we went. it works out to this...Original,mezzo,lilliputian,mini lilli, micro. Each one is approximately 25% smaller than the one before it. There is a margin of error that comes with handmade items of course, and so the tines are not ALWAYS any certain length. the tops are not ALWAYS the same thickness. We also have an A-Line profile, which is the same thickness from the top to the tips in one smooth arch. Our original profile is more organic, the topper has some roundness to it and it waves on the front and back.

We are trying to stock the shop with lots of interesting creations that we have been wanting to make all summer, and summer is almost fall now!

 We have made this gorgeous eye tine hair stick that i would love to keep for myself, but it needs a home that will get out of the house more than me so it can shock the world, and we are taking offers on it! see our facebook page, or send us a comment here to make your offer if you want this beauty!

 WE have also come up with 2 new antler fork designs, this newest one , the wishbone, is darling! they are very flexible, strong and look so cool! they are smaller and thinner and weigh less than the full antler tine forks with the wood toppers too!

WE will be back with more on our progress after this weekend and a little catching up, we get a new shipment of antlers this week :D and will have lots of new stuff coming...we are going to delay opening custom orders until the end of August, so we can just get the requested forks made as well as the shop stocked..but the customs will come back!
we love you all and keep you in our hearts and prayers, and thank you so much for loving our art, we hope you know how much you are all appreciated!!



 

A new Fork Design for the Fork Tuck Bun!

 Finally! I have been trying to do the fork tuck bun, but having thick hair, have not been  able to weave my hair in between any of the tines on my hair forks....but...i had a broken fork here that we removed the center tine from..and VOILA! it works!!! so, if any thick hairs are interested, we are going to start making the wave shape fork without its center tine for you so we can all do the fork tuck bun!

 I had to start with the fork upside down, holding it in my right hand, and using my left hand to weave my hair in a figure 8 around the tines...and at the end there was a little creative twisting and tucking ...

 It did take quite a bit of practice to get the tightness right, you have to leave enough room in the length to flip the fork and not pull yourself into a facelift! it makes a lovely full chignon/frech twist hybrid look and i think its beautiful!

 I have shown it from several angles here, and i might do a video too, in tandem with our already present fork tuck bun, to demonstrate it for thick hair.

I would really love your feedback on the fork, and if anyone with thick hair would be interested in having the tines this wide and straight to do the fork tuck bun!

WE have also started stocking up our Artfire studio, and we don't get a lot of traffic there yet, there are some gems sitting there, waiting to be snatched up! hope to see you there, and get your feedback on the new fork!

On woods, Red Heart today...

Today we are going to talk about Red Heart wood in our wood series. It is a new wood for our studio, and we just found out about it from Cook Woods, who gives this description of the wood:

"Fine, closed grain makes this Central American hardwood machine easily & finish well. The unique brilliant red color with black undertones is unusual and unmatched in other exotic hardwoods. The Mayans refer to this hardwood is Chakte Koke. This wood can  turn honey/brown when exposed to sunlight.  We have had good results with keeping the red color of this wood when it is finished with a UV sealer, and /or kept stored out of direct sunlight. 

Cosmocalyx spectabilis."

Some of the red heart wood also comes from Mexico, its species name is  Erythroxylon mexicanum, which is a shrub that is fairly small and gnarly, also called the mamoa or momoa

WE ,Grah-Toe Studio, have found this wood to be bright red/orange and marroon  to hot pink  in color, light weight compared to blood wood or tulip wood, and about the same in cost to bloodwood.  It works very nicely, and polishes beautifully!  THe graining does stand out much more than the blood wood  or cardinal wood graining does.

We have not been able to find any information on the harvesting practices or if the species is in any danger or not.

If anyone has any information concerning any other properties of this bush or wood, medical or magical, please feel free to comment and let us know where you found the information!

Summer time Creativity..

We are so glad its getting a bit warmer now, and we are hoping that you are enjoying your summer, or fall, wherever you are!

we are going to be making lots of new things through the summer, and we have decided to stop taking custom orders until August. WE apologize to those of you waiting on your custom orders, we are working on a particularly complicated pair of hairtanas, that are going to be AMAZING...it has just put us behind. So we will be catching those custom orders already placed up as soon as we possibly can, and the shop will be having some really cool new things!

 WE have several new designs for inlays and decorations that we want to make, as well as a new product that has been too long coming!

We will also have some more hairtanas available to buy form the shop once we are caught up on custom orders!

SO, we thank you all for your patience, and understanding as we work as fast we can and still keep our quality up to the standards you are used to from our studio! we cannot rush these things :D

We send our love and thanks out to you all, and want you to know that we appreciate you each and every one more than we can say!

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!

Some Bun Fun!

That title made me think of Charlottes Web and I had to smile!  I hope you get some smiles in today too!!

WE have had several requests for videos on how to use our hairforks and antler sticks, and although we do have them on Facebook and You-tube, it was  suggested to put them here, so they can be found easily!

So here will be the collection of videos on how people have creatively and instructively been using our hairforks and antler sticks! there are some for thinner hair updos, some with shoulder length hair updos, and some with very long and thick hair also!!

we hope you enjoy having these all together, what a great suggestion..I wish i would have thought of it myself :D LOL

We Are so glad to have the chance to show you that our forks work in ALL types of hair, and the different updos are unlimited!!

We thank you all so much, for your wonderful communications with us, for your love of our creations, and for returning to our studio..You are a part of us now!

New woods are peeking out!

WE hope you all are having a lovely start to spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and enjoying the onset of fall in the southern!

WE have begun to cut on our new woods and are adding the new forks to the shop daily! here are a few pictures of a few of the woods...bubinga above and below...

Our new Nefertari shape is a total showcase for fabulous grained woods! we love the curved fit and are getting great feedback on it! thank you all so much for sharing your experience with this new design, and for the lovely appreciation photos!! we cherish every one of them...sometimes i think if i walked up behind you in a public place i would know it was you from the back of your heads :D

THis is a picture of our newest black and white ebony board, its graining is more stark than the last specimen we had and it is so striking!

 And the Macadamia Nut, what a story! We went on a search for it, and hit wall after wall, everyone telling us it is not sold commercially. Then, I happened to ask one of our wood suppliers, out of desperation, and he had just acquired a few rare pieces and was shocked that we asked for them by name! He said he had never been able to get any before and may never again, so we bought all the pieces he had, which were few...but we are going to use it as judiciously as we can, making inlays with  the amazing knots and areas that we cannot use in forks. The wood varies alot in color, the first board we cut, pictured below, is actually quite dark in color. THe other pieces tend more toward a peachy pink color, this one is more mauve to rust, but we may not be able to get more than one more fork from this piece.

 Here is another picture of the Macadamia nut wood from another angle and you can see the spectacular graining pattern, the chatoyance in these areas is striking, much like the silk oak wood was, but smaller patterns.

WE love wood, and sharing that love of wood with you! if you have any questions for us we are convo and email friendly and love to hear from you! we are still taking custom orders and want to thank all of you for your inspiring requests!

Our need to provide for ourselves pushes us to strive for the best we can do and offer you all the highest quality work we can do....starting a micro business is no easy feat, and we are blessed to be in our 3rd year and plan on continuing to grow! THere is a song that talks about working for yourself at doing nothing all day..every time i hear that i think " this guy never worked for himself! It is a long hard day of working for us, every day. We don't get to punch the clock, get paid vacations, we rarely even take a day off, becuase we like to eat and not be homeless!  we thank all of you that appreciate our work, and we continue to be as fair to you in cost and quality as we can be, and we love to show you how much we appreciate you by making your packages special and giving you a discount whenever we can.
We are getting together another wood lesson post, and a "Day in the life of a Self Sustaining Artist"  is in the making...
Love to you all, may your hair grow to your toes!
Kimi