Have fun in everything you do. These are words we live by.

 The glass

 Debbi started doing traditional stained glass in 1998 when she took a class with our daughter as a fun bonding moment. After the class she decided that it was for her. We built her a work bench and it shared the garage with my woodworking tools. When we moved to Idaho she didn’t have a place to work so we transformed an 8’ x 8’ shed into the glass shop.

At the beginning of 2003 we went to the Las Vegas glass show and Debbi took some more classes. Since I didn’t have much to do I wandered around browsing all the wares and really fell hard for the fused glass art. Everything I looked at just made me salivate and the science behind it made it that much more intriguing. We brought home with us a little hot box and started doing some small things. This of course didn’t last long and I soon realized that I needed a full size kiln or I would never be able to do the things I wanted. I took a class in Sacramento from Phil Teefy and this opened my eyes to actually how much can be done with this medium, the possibilities really are endless.

Since Boise is growing and there is only a few glass suppliers in the valley we decided to try to get a storefront going that would be able to supply and do classes on a large scale. Debbi really worked her tail off and put together a business plan and we proceeded to try and get a small business loan from the banks. After several attempts and lots of compliments on how great the business plan was we still didn’t have our loan, go figure. It turns out we were asking for to little and the banks wouldn’t have made enough of a profit to make it worth their while.

 Oh well we took the money we had to invest and built a studio on the side of our house, got a bunch of supplies, a kiln and we were on our way to making stuff. Can’t really do retail of supplies or classes like we had hoped but at least it was a start.

I have a little background in pottery and started nosing around to see if there was any way to make my own molds, molds are so expensive. After talking with several folks and reading tons of stuff on the internet I took what I learned and designed a technique that works for me. So most of the pieces you see on this site are made from original molds.

 The wood

 My grandpa was a cabinet/furniture maker for most of his life. I can remember as a little boy standing in his shop smelling the fresh cut wood, waiting to see what he would come up with next. As I got older I actually got to help him with things, and that was some of the best times I can remember.

All my family told me not to pursue the hard work like grandpa and dad did, (dad was in construction and truck driving for years) get an education and go after that desk job. I did just that and after several years of thankless technical work I got back into the woodworking. Took some classes to refresh my memory from what grandpa had taught me long ago and started collecting tools. I found that after a long day of work, playing out in my shop creating, really relieved the stress.

I still love woodworking but I’ve been coming up with new ideas to blend wood and glass together, so I can have the best of both worlds. Keep checking back on our site and see what’s coming.

 But most of all have fun, and try to find an outlet that makes you forget your daily stress.