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/

Taking care of business..everyday...come on and sing along!

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 in a F.O.G. ?

WEll, i hope you are not in a real fog, but that you will join in with us in the F.O. G. that we are starting!

This is something new for us and we are excited to bring this program to you!

F.O.G. stands for Friends of Grah-Toe Studio.....it is a referral program where you can earn reward credit in our studio by sending friends to shop with us! here is how it will work:

1.You refer a freind to us to buy a hair fork.

2.Friend shops with us, spends $50 or more on in stock items (custom orders are not included ), and leaves YOUR name in the notes with the order.
3.They will get a 10% off refund of that first order and you will get a $5 credit to shop with!!

How fun is that!

We already have a few of you who have done this recently written in "the book", but we look forward to filling our book up with referral names!

AS tomorrow is April 1, and we will be accepting custom orders again, we also have a few changes we want to share with you to the way custom orders will be taken:

1. Each person can have only 2 items on custom order at a time. this helps us get them to you  in a timely fashion as well as allowing others to place custom orders as well.

2.Ice Hairtanas. We will be making 3 a month for the shop, and one pair a month for custom orders. The price will be $185 each. You will have the chance to request colors for your handles on the shop ice hairtanas and on custom ones as well. We do have limitede material for these, and they take over a week(40 hours) to make ONE. WHen the material is gone, that will be the last of the ice hairtanas!

3.If your custom order is under $70, and you are not a first time shopper, we will make it and you can pay when it is listed. If it is very unusual, expensive or personalized you will need to deposit at least 50% for us to begin the project. The second half with shipping will be due when we complete the order.

We appreciate you all so very much, and we cannot ever express our grattitude to you for loving our work . WE wake every morning anxious to start our day, dreaming of new designs and looking forward to talking to you and getting to know your hair!

We hope the F.O.G. program shows you how much we appreciate you in a tangible way and that you are happy enough with your work from us to refer your friends with long hair to our studio!

Love to you all

Kimi & Stacy 

Continuing education on Woods..today is about spalting..

Hey everyone!
Hope you had a Fabulous Valentines day with loved ones yesterday!!

Sorry its been so long since we have done a post on woods, we are going to talk about spalting today!
The deifinition of spalting by Wikipedia says

"Spalting is any form of wood coloration caused by fungi. Although primarily found in dead trees, spalting can also occur under stressed tree conditions or even in living trees. Although spalting can cause weight loss and strength loss in the wood, the unique coloration and patterns of spalted wood are sought after by woodworkers.<sup>["

Knowing this may sound creepy or gross to some of you, but the beauty of nature, even in rot or fungus cannot be discounted, as we have seen in the rare piece of spalted holly that was used for some of our hairforks. HOlly is specifically a wood that must be harvested and dried in an exact manner to get its traditional white pure coloring. The spalting occurring is considered a defect and as far as we can tell when it happens they use this wood to burn...we have been inquiring for it all over and noone has any becuase it would not be bought or sold since it is considered ruined...
SPalting can occur in any wood and is especially beautiful in some cases. it can cause lines, streaks, and colors ranging from light brown to greenand blue or black. it can be spotted, lines, swirled or blotched.


"While pigmentation fungi do not degrade the wood cell wall, this type of decay can lead to a reduction in toughness (amount of energy absorbed before breaking), and increased permeability [8]. Pigmentation can occur on both hardwood and softwood, unlike other types of spalting which are more host specific."
Wikipedia</sup> 


In other words, some spalting is caused by fungi that only change the color of the wood, and some actually degrade the wood, making it soft, flaky or even dust. In these instances those types of spalted wood really are not good for any type of wood working, so the fungi that cause the beautiful splating and do not degrade the wood are creatures with a specific purpose!

While we continue to hunt for the spalted holly, and we look at other types of spalted woods for our hairforks, we cannot order or make these types of natural beauties occur..so please be patient as we hunt for beautiful spalted woods and enjoy our other woods in the mean time!!

Thanks so much for your continues support of our hair art, we create out of love of hair and creating, and are so blessed that others enjoy and can use our hair art well!!!

New year, New look

As we have started a new year, and started with some new sculpted designs for our hairfork line, we wanted to move that new look into our shop as well.  DO what you love, love what you do. Thats what we want you to see!

we have gotten our new banner up in the  shop and would love to have you come see our new clean fresh look! we LOVE it and hope you do too! we wanted a fresh new direction and less words..which our wonderful designer accomplished in a heartbeat after we described our vision. Please stop by and let us know what you think too!  we would love your comments here, on etsy or our facebook fan page too!

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

BLACK FRIDAY SALE 15% off

Sale time is here in our Etsy shop! WE are offering 15% off everything through monday! today the code you can use at check out is BLACKFRIDAYNOV2010 and it will take the percentage off your order before you check out!
WE sure appreciate everyone who has come by, we have lots of really beautiful forks left in the shop and to be listed over the weekend!!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Get Your Grahtoe On : Awesome Wooden Hair Forks

We are honored to have our hairforks reviewd here ont his video by Autumnmagic! Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your beautiful bountiful hair with all of us! We appreciate you so much!!

A new you-tube review of our work! And, Fork for kitty SOLD!!

We are so excited to tell you that the fork for the broken kitty has sold! YIPPEE thank you so much! and we would like to share another artisans work that is going to help that same kitty, this special piece of work she made just for him is amazing!We also want to share with you a video that was made about our hairforks. We so appreciate that she took the time to share her opinions and experience on a video. SHe has a bountiful amount of hair and has allowed us to make some very special forks for her!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejNu1Meu7dc

We would welcome your comments and your visiting the shop above, which is
http://www.etsy.com/shop/venbead to look at the listing for kitty but while you are there perhaps you will find that special something you have been wanting for yourself or a gift! she has an amazing talent with metal and glass and i own several wonderful pieces from this shop and they quality is top of the line.

It's not snowing outside yet, but snowflake adoptions are available at the studio!

We haven't had any snwo at our place yet, although the mountain peaks are white again....i am not looking forward to shoveling out the drive way! but we have been in high snowflake gears in the studio!

Its the time of year to start thinking about decorations and ornaments again and we have been not only making them but finding them on Etsy! there are so many talented artisans making lovely ornaments for your holidays to be glitzy and bright!

For animal lovers, i found the cutest hedgehog ornament made of clay!

If you love snowmen you have got to see this pair!

Porcelain and personalized ornaments abound on Etsy
ANd , of course, there's one of my faves, a hide-a-heart ornament!

So whatever your heart is looking for, try out etsy and support a real person, instead of the mall or chain stores this year!