The Eager Anticipation and Fear of Starting Up Brass Hammer Designs

 Hi Everyone. Jen here. I'm Josh's wife and co-owner of Brass Hammer Designs (BHD). First, where the Blog Name, A.D.D. Art, came from.... Josh has A.D.D. I'll let him go into details another time on here and give you insight into who he is, but I wanted to introduce the reason we named this blog what we did. I do not have A.D.D. and can say it gives Josh a creativity that I am envious of many times. If you tell me exactly what you want and sketch/write it out on paper, I can probably make that happen if I know how. A template would make it even better for me; and even better, is for me to just go tell Josh what you want. I'm always amazed how Josh's vision of a piece just happens from his head - brand new, never had been out there before. I cannot even describe what he can make out of the most boring, ugly pieces; from old floor joists in an 1800's home to the coffee can I'm about to throw away. And it all just happens with some brainstorming or sketches. At first, keeping all of these materials and "trash" was the most annoying thing in the world to me. He'd keep everything that I was ready to throw away! I thought he was just storing up stuff without a cause and it just seemed to clutter up the garage or room that he put it in; and it cluttered my life too at times. But then, he started using some of it and made things like shelves and bowls and carvings. He's really quite the artist. He works with just about every media I can think of: wood, metal, acrylic, leather, fabric, etc. And I might be biased, but I think he's a great photographer as well. How many people know how to do all of these things or are willing to learn at the drop of a hat?! I don't know many.....  So the idea has been in our heads for a while that we need to do something with it. And that's how our dream of Brass Hammer Designs came to be.

So, Josh is knee deep in trying to do as much as possible and I'm on the administrative role trying to keep us organized and help him get to the point of being comfortable in our garage and making beauty come to life. So far, since formally announcing we started BHD, we've experienced so many raw emotions: often feelings of being overwhelmed, then at the same time relieved to have taken the step and excited  about this new adventure. Josh is wheeling and dealing to buy up raw materials and equipment left and right. He's purchased a table saw from one of my co-workers, a brand-spanking-new band saw, a huge piece of red oak that will be so amazingly beautiful in future pieces and lots of scrap wood. We also hired Tony Deal Photography to take some of the photos on our website and Tamara Deal, Tony's wife, did some initial business consulting for us to help us figure out what direction to take, as well. All of this has given us a good start to what we believe is the beginning. We're working as fast as we possibly can to get up and running with an efficient shop and get down to the actual business of bringing art to life. Getting everything set up and aligned to best serve our customers for us has been overwhelming and exciting. We've started setting up the web page, a Facebook business page (Brass Hammer Designs), this blog and getting business cards printed; plus we're trying to get the shop up to par and this all has been happening in the past 6 weeks. All of you small business owners probably realize the numerous hats we're wearing here, but did I mention that we both have full-time jobs and are trying to juggle those as well?  Also, I won't list all of the financial constraints we have in our personal life, but let me just say that some days, it would make better sense to hire a maid, a cook and an accountant. But, alas, we are doing this on our own. And we hope that you enjoy watching the process unfold as much as we are. Thanks for following. Thanks for listening. Thanks for inspiring us.