The final week of the March Meet The Maker challenge hosted by Joanne Hawker.
Day Ten – “Where”
You can find us in beautiful Northwest Montana, but we didn’t start here. The Netherlands, England, and Southern California all played a vital part in getting us where we are now. In fact, it was while Shaun (British) and Elisabeth (Dutch/American) lived in England and Jonathan (American) and Lydia (Dutch) lived in Southern California that FGG Designs came to life. We’re thankful the Lord brought us all together in different ways and equipped each one of us to do what we do today.
Living in Montana is wonderful. The winters are a wonderland and, at times, it can feel like we are living in a Hallmark movie. The community is welcoming and friendly, the landscapes are magnificent to behold, and life out here can be taken at a much slower and leisurely rate. All of this helps us as a business to slow down and focus on making great products and it also allows us to interact personally with our community to ensure we bring products to craft shows that people will love, need, and enjoy.
Day Eleven – “Favourite Collection”
Today we’re talking about our best seller, our original product, the favorite amongst many…the Scrub-Bee.
Lydia discovered the Scrubby yarn by Red Heart years ago and was intrigued by its unique texture. She found a pattern for using the yarn as a scrubber on the Red Heart website and started making it for her kitchen. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the power of the scrubber and she soon started making these as gifts for family and friends. Time and again she heard how much it’s loved and started brainstorming a clever name. It didn’t take long to come up with “Scrub-Bee” because the scrubber has the power of a worker bee. 😉
All of this development happened in the beginning of the FGG Designs business, and this became our first product and, very quickly, our best seller. She has changed the original pattern to be what we use today to make our Scrub-Bees.
One family member requested a big Scrub-Bee after he used the kitchen one to clean off the bugs from his car. It removed all the bugs without a scratch…but wasn’t too keen on using it again for the dishes. 😅 Now we have the Mega Scrub-Bee, a best seller amongst the guys for all the big “toys.”
Another family member asked for a little Scrub-Bee to use for her dentures, and to this day the Mini Scrub-Bee is still in use. 🥰
So now you know a little more of why our Scrub-Bee has become such a big hit. It’s reusable. It cleans without scratching. It’s safe to use on all surfaces, including non-stick. Plus, it adds a fun pop of color to the kitchen sink.
Day Twelve – “Making”
As we’ve said a few times during this month, we have chosen as a business to make our products using traditional crafting methods. Now, for things like watercolor paintings, crocheted items, etc., this seems relatively obvious, but for things like our woodenware, the traditional process is different than how others may make wooden items.
Our woodenware items are made through a tradition known as “green woodworking.” This method involves working with fresh wood, still green with moisture content (hence the “green” in green woodworking). All of the woodenware we sell starts out as a log, which is split (at least once down the middle to remove the center of the log). Once split, it is initially shaped with an axe, and then further refined with a carving knife (typically known as a Sloyd knife). When the item has been carved to roughly 90% of its final form, we leave it to air dry before finishing off the item using razor-sharp knives to give a smooth and clean finish. The final touches include burnishing (a process using a hard and smooth item to flatten the wood fibers and give the product a smooth, shiny finish), branding, and then finally an application of a food-safe finish to seal and protect the item, while also bringing out the beauty of the grain.
To see a log transformed into a fully functional wooden item (like a spoon), using only a couple of hand tools, is such a satisfying experience, and we hope our customers are satisfied with the final result too.
Tools and materials used in this video:
Maple Wood
Gransfors Bruk Large Swedish Axe @gransforsbruk
Leather Strop @beavercraft_tools
Sloyd Knife @squatchandsons_customs
Open Curve Hook Knife @robinwoodcraft @woodtools
Burnisher @srhearn0908
Spoon Butter @FGGDesigns
Day Thirteen – “Product Story”
Our books have been a relatively new addition to our business, and in some way, they fit with our business (as they are written by Shaun), but they are also entirely different to everything else we do. But what in the world caused us to start writing these books? We would say they are the result of three things: love, need, and feedback.
Shaun has always had a passion for God’s Word, ever since the Lord brought him to faith in the Fall of 2012, and I guess you could say that these books are the fruit of that passion. Since his conversion, he has sought opportunities to study and to teach what he has learned from his studies, with a desire to share the beauty of God’s holy Word with others.
So when a love for teaching the Bible met together with a need he was seeing in the church, the first book was born. “Can I Fall Away?” was written to address a topic that many Christians, including those in our area, have wrestled with throughout the centuries. Although there are many books written to address this topic, Shaun felt the need to write a short, concise, and clear book to help those who were either confused about the issue or were struggling with it.
However, because of the feedback it received, what started out as a small book to hand out to a few people at our local church quickly turned into more small and concise books being written on different Biblical topics. So now we have the Understandable Theology Series. As of this post, we have five books in the series with the next book written and awaiting edits and finalization.
Each edition in the series aims to cover a different Biblical (or theological) topic, in a small 60-80 page book, and explain it in a way that is understandable for the everyday person.