Cinco De Mayo Sale!
In honor of Cinco De Mayo, the above granite serving stand is on sale for 15% off tonight in my etsy shop! The picture just says "Cinco De Mayo Party"! Just insert the code "5MAYO" in the "Notes to seller" section upon checkout. I will refund by paypal tonight. For you party people, it will be on sale till 6am tomorrow morning.
Have a great and safe Cinco De Mayo evening. I'm off to get some enchiladas, chips and salsa, and hopefully a margarita!
Chris
I've got a couple of new designs that are based off of my tumbled travertine tea light holders. I really like how these turned out and plan on doing more in different colors and stone.
The first is a set of 2 limestone tealight candle holders. This limestone is honed and filled for smooth finish. The edges have been double beveled and polished to match the top and bottom surface. Each candle holder, holds one unscented soy tea light candle from Bazil Essentials. Makes a great little centerpiece for a small table or shelf, and perfect for a coffee table. Each one measures 3.75"x3.75" and ~1" thick. More information available here.
The next design is very similar and in a really nice green marble with wonderful veins of white and lighter green. These also have the double beveled and polished edges, but with and added rounded bevel on the corners, to really make them unique. These also include soy tea light candles in your choice of scented or unscented from Skin Essentials. More info on these is available here.
These candle holders are great for any room in the house and easily moved from one room to the other. They can also make a great impromptu coaster, by just removing the candle. More stone creations can be found in my Etsy Shop and my Artfire Shop. I am always interested in new ideas, so if you have an idea for a stone creation, contact me and we'll see what we can come up with.
Chris
Tonight, I figured I would pick an item and go a little more in depth with the inspiration and story behind the piece, which is hard to do in an online shop listing. I chose my Limestone Stand With Wine Bottle Vase/Candleholder as it has a story behind it.
When I first started my shop at Etsy, one of the members who was nice enough to critique my shop and give me some tips and tricks, was Zeke from the shop, bodhicitta. He makes wine glasses, juice cups, tumblers, etc... out of used wine, beer, and soda bottles. One evening while perusing his shop, I thought to myself, "I wonder what he does with the tops of the bottles that get cut off?" I then grabbed one of my wine bottles and looked at it upside down. I immediately thought of a vase as I looked at it. I had one of my granite stands sitting next to me, so I put the upside down bottle on it, next to it, behind it, and an idea was born. 
I started a conversation with Zeke and asked him what he did with the bottle tops that were cut off. We bounced some ideas back and forth, and then he suggested that I try my hand at cutting and polishing my own bottle. I hadn't even thought of that! It would not look as wonderful as his fire polished rims, but he was sure that I would be able to give it a nice polish. The picture to the left is an example of his fire polished rims, definately check his shop out. The next day I cleaned one of our wine bottles from the recycle bin, cut it, and polished the rim. It came out surprisingly well! Still nothing compared to Zeke's fire polish, but good none the less. Zeke, thanks for the encouragement and confidence to try it! He's such a great guy, that he offered tips and tricks should I need them. I am hoping soon to collaborate with him on a multi bottle project, as I really like the fire polished rims that he does.
I figured I would tell everyone a little about my day job. I am a second generation self-employed licensed tile contractor. My company is of course, Stover Tile and Design, and my lovely wife, April, does the books for me. I have had my license for close to 5 years now, but I have been doing tile just about my whole life.
I learned how to do tile while growing up and working with my father, David Stover, who did business as Stover & Sons Tile. After 4 years in the Marine Corps and season of being a ski bum and driving snocats grooming runs at June and Mammoth Mtn, I moved back to the central coast and started working full time for my Dad again. I met my now wife April and eventually got my own license to do tile. I still worked for my Dad at first, but the added license was a great benefit. He ended up getting out of tile and buying another business, Tydix Products, and I continued doing tile under my own business name. (Here's a pic from 4 years ago, of my dad and I on one of our last jobs together.)
I have been blessed to have been able to work with some great general contractors and for some great home owners. Some of the projects I have got to work on have been amazing, really challenging, and fun. I try to add my own artistic touch to all my jobs. Here is a slideshow of some of my work from the past.
A couple years ago, my brother and his fiance, asked me to make a cakestand out of travertine for them. They could not find a square cakestand that they liked that would go well with their cake. I figured out how to make one and that was my first "piece" I made. They still use it daily in the center of their dining table and for all the birthday cakes. When work slowed down recently, I finally took the plunge and took everyone's advice and started making more pieces to sell and that is how I ended up with my etsy and artfire shops.
That's the quick and easy version of how I came to be in the tile business and how my online shops came to be. Enjoy the pictures and feel free to ask me any questions. :)
