Creative Woodworks & crafts 2004-06, страница 16

About Us

If we had a herd of cattle or a pasture full of breading horses. we would already have our brand design. Look in the bottom right corner of any of our unique pattern designs and you will see a capital "S" with a "K" behind it. In some patterns, I have even incorporated our "brand" onto the horse or bull I drew. We are SKWOODWORKS, which stands for "Shelli and Kerry Woodworks and Designs." We started fooling with wood right after our marriage in 1999. As we were putting two lives together and clearing out duplicate toasters and toothbrush holders, I found a beautiful relief carving of a largemouth bass that my husband did many years ago. He was very humble about the piece, but I loved it and told him I had always wanted to try my hand at carving what I ioved most: horses. We bought a piece of wood, and he relieved my main design and let me detail a horse leaping out from the plank. We stained it, showed it off, and hung it up. We now attribute that piece with the birth of our mutual love lor wood, all thinqs weed, and SKWOODWORKS.

Kerry's brother is credited with showing us a scroll saw. Never in my life would I have imagined we would have invested so much time, money and effort into things around a scroll saw. I mean, I had never heard of such a machine! Now we have a website, wviAv.skwoodworks.com, a regular customer base, and pattern ideas almost weekly. We have so many things we want to do and so little time in which to do them! Especially within !he last 12 months—we have been a little out of sorts with the addition of our daughter, Grace. At almost a year old now, she has added more joy, inspiration, love and work to an already full plate for my husband, son and myself! (And ! don't think we'd have it any other way.)

Wood choice is an extremely important part of cur projects. In some pieces, it is the reason for the consideration or creation. We are professional wood 'hoards." We pick up a special or marked piece of wood and hold onto it forever, waiting for that one particular pattern worthy ol the wood! I have even drawn patterns ON individual pieces of wood, making them absolutely one of a kind. We get silly over burled walnut, bird's-eye arid wormy maple, and rich, shimmer/ mahogany.

We started scrolling in a converted 10' x 10' lawn building. We each had our own side, yet were still, sometimes, elbow to elbow. Kerry's job was to prep and cut; mine was to finish arid ship/sell. After the first 2 or 3 patterns handed down to me for finishing, t was ready to quit] There HAD to be an easier way to remove all the spray glue from the pattern on the top piece in order to salvage it for selling. Kerry got ari idea and brought home a piece of Removable Adhesive Paper large enough to copy the patterns onto. He peeled, applied, cut and passed the piece to me. I "unpeeied," sanded, finished and framed the piece in minutes, and we have never looked back. I only use spray adhesive now to adhere scrolled pieces to their backers (like those being shipped). I don't finish as much as I used to, but I draw all my patterns on Removable Adhesive Paper. I draw in standard sizes for easy mounting or framing. We sell the paper, finished pieces and patterns oft of our website.