Meet Idaho Etsy Team Member, Bill of BillsWoodenPleasures.etsy.com
He creates all things wood related.
Some background on him: Bill Stated, " When I was growing up I spent a lot of my time at my Aunt and Uncles house. My aunt was an artist and my uncle a craftsman that built luxurious homes. All my time at their houses was spent admiring their work and questioning how everything was made. Finally when I turned 14 I started working for my uncle learning how to build homes and learning the basics of woodworking since he also made custom cabinetry, jewelry boxes, and furniture items. Since then I have gone through college and got a Bachelor’s degree in Construction Management. While going to college I spent my free time building houses. After college I went to work designing civil construction projects and in my free time have been doing woodworking as well as remodeling my house and my mother’s house. It was this past summer that the idea of my shop was born."
"For my sixth wedding anniversary I began searching the web for a gift for my wife. The theme for a sixth anniversary gift is either the traditional iron or the contemporary wood. Not getting anywhere browsing those wedding anniversary websites for ideas got me to think about what my wife likes to do. I knew she liked scrapbooking. But my problem was that scrapbooks aren't really made from iron or wood. So I searched the web for a wood scrapbook. The only one I could find that I really liked wound up being way too expensive at $150 for a simple hardwood book. So I decided that it would be extra thoughtful and make a scrapbook myself. I also wanted to add a little bit of flare to the book and use my router that I recently had purchased. So I decided to do an inlay. I didn't know it but it would be this scrapbook that launches my shop."
How his began his shop: He said, "After my wife posted the book on Facebook and got lots of people responding that loved it, I thought that I should make some for people that do scrapbooking for Christmas. I chose to make the inlays be what each person collected and do some wood burning as well or instead of an inlay. For my mom it was bears, for my grandma-in-law it was lighthouses, for my step-mother-in-law it was tweety bird, for my mother-in-law it was a pegasus, for my sister it was a penguin and for my aunt-in-law I decided to make a “memories” book with hearts.
Also for Christmas gifts I wanted to give some of the guys a handmade gift. I chose to give the chefs of my wife’s family a cutting board with different designs.
"All of my products are made with natural colored wood… not painted so that the beauty of the wood can shine through. I can make custom wood burns and/or a custom inlays. And that pretty much sums up me and my shop."
