Nie Nie Day: Silent Auction: 4 pulls of your choice

i came upon this story today about a woman named stephanie nielson (blogger of Nie Nie Dialogues) who was in a tragic plane crash with her husband, christian. they are now burn patients in critical condition. with 4 kids under the age of 6, they definitely need some help. gabrielle blair from Design Mom is hosting a silent auction on thursday, aug. 28th and has suggested other bloggers take part. all the proceeds will go to stephanie and christian paypal fund.

F is FOR FRANK wants to HELP so we are auctioning 4 pulls of your choice. please check out our funky line of children's knobs on etsy.

here are some examples i picked out but feel free to mix and match.

how the silent auction works:

1. please place your bid by leaving a comment with your bid amount and your email in the comment section. check the comments to see the most recent high bid.

2. following the close of the auction, i will contact the winner. you may tell me your choice of 4 pulls at the close of the auction or when you bid. the winner will pay the amount of their winning bid to the stephanie and christian paypal account. the winner will then forward the paypal receipt to gabrielle@designmom.com.

3. because we make our knobs by hand, it take 1-2 weeks to receive them

4. last but not least the auction ends sunday aug 31 @ midnight.

5. happy bidding!!

Cook Children's Hospital

earlier this year we were given the opportunity to work on a cook children's hospital playroom sponsored by troy aikman's foundation, hks, hasbro, garth brooks and the NHL. working directly with hks we designed and fabricated elements in the room that are kid friendly and reflect the sponsorship. we created spinable boxes with fun images. the chandelier is made of over 50 NHL hockey sticks. the pulls in the kitchen are Mr. potatohead arms cast in pewter. the backsplash is made of pearl epoxy resin with NHL hockey pucks embedded into the resin. we also decorated the walls with Mr. potatoheads by cutting them in half.

More firescreens

for some reason, we have been commissioned to do a lot of firescreens this year. we don't mind; firescreens tend to allow you to be very creative and are a nice scale. the clients with the scroll screen had a huge fireplace and wanted to scale it down a little. we decided to fabricate a border insert and then created a firescreen to match. the scroll fireplace is made of fabricated antiqued steel. the second fireplace, we call the "x" fireplace, is also fabricated antiqued steel with bronze highlight. i like the inventive feet on this piece. both of these firescreens were done for one of our favorite designers, jane waggoner.

chrysanthemum firescreen

here is a chrysanthemum firescreen for a master bedroom. it was designed by shannah in collaboration with interior designer, jane waggoner. shannah was inspired by the chrysanthemum design on their bedspread. the firescreen was made by taking a picture of the bedspread, photo shopping the image to a stencil form and then cutting the image out of a sheet of steel using a water jet process. We made the feet from the flower cut outs and antiqued the steel for a nice natural finish.

frank-n-furter

about a year and a half ago shannah and i decided to collaborate on a chair design. she had just created a firescreen for a client by cutting an image out of metal. i loved the concept. we decided to use an old design of mine that i made in a wood bending class at haystack craft school. we replaced the back of the chair with a piece of aluminum which we had water-jet cut into a wood grain pattern. the aluminum sides are made to hold the back in place, support the seat and the arms for the flip side. we have a passion for creating multi-functional designs whether it is art and function or two chairs in one. i love how the image on the metal back mimics the wooden seat. it was only fitting that we name the chair that swings both ways after a famous drag queen, frank-n-furter. as for the contest, we never sent it in. turns out shannah read the fine print the day it was due and if we had won, we would have had to sell the rights to the design.

love the kids

last august we decided to create a line of funky kids' door knobs and drawer pulls. the majority of our custom business is hardware, whether it is drapery escutcheons or door handles...we can make it! we also felt the children's hardware market was lacking in creativity. we researched hot trends, started sculpting, made our molds, cast and antiqued and our line was created. the hard part was knowing what to do next. after attempting the retail route, we have decided to sell them ourselves via etsy and our website. we cast them as the orders come in. every knob completely handmade by shannah or me. here are some pics taken by steve visneau for small magazine.

our dogs

here are our dogs. they come to work with us everyday. shannah has milo. he's 5 yrs old and was rescued from norcal boxer rescue. millie (my dog... also rescued from nbr) is just over a year. they are madly in love!