By Vicki Prichard
NKyTribune reporter
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Michelle Westfall's creations are increasingly in demand for weddings. |
As a young mother of two children,
Michelle Westfall knew she needed something for herself.
“I needed something where I could just
sit down at night and have a creative outlet,” says Westfall.
That “something” turned into Pine and Paint, a business that now has Westfall selling her custom wood designs
not only locally, but shipping them to customers across the country. To date,
she has sold 1,357 signs through her Etsy Pine and Paint shop, and hundreds
locally through craft shows and individual orders.
“Weekly, I’m getting about fifteen
orders, and that’s just Etsy orders,” says Westfall. “People who know me will
just message me with an order.”
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Westfall at The Prickel Barn |
Crafting the business
Pine and Paint evolved as Westfall,
who lives in Fort Mitchell, sought balance between being a business owner and a
mom. She began by building and painting furniture, but quickly found that that
was too time consuming and difficult to do with two small children.
“I needed something that I could do upstairs –
do at the dining room table – with them,” she says.
So, she took her love for
hand-painted wood signs and set out to learn how to design them herself.
“At first, I was so bad at it,”
says Westfall. “I had to do so much research to figure out how to do it.”
Once she had the design part down,
the rest was easy. A self-professed “daddy’s girl,” Westfall learned to master
power tools from her father, Bob Zerhusen, also of Fort Mitchell, who builds
decks, and now houses, through his own business, B Zerhusen Home Improvement.
When she was a student at Beechwood
High School, Westfall earned money to pay for her car by cleaning and sweeping
her father’s work sites.
“When I first started doing
furniture, dad taught me how to use a miter saw. I was terrified at first
because it was so big,” says Westfall. “My dad jokes that he thinks he lost so
many tools when I started doing woodwork.”
Now, with kids in tow, Westfall is
a regular customer at Home Depot where she says the workers chat with her
children. She purchases four by eight sheets of plywood then cuts the wood down
herself to the various sizes she needs for her signs.
Next steps involve painting or
staining the wood as the backdrop to the lettering and messaging. Westfall
initially created stencils through a Cricut, an electronic cutting machine
which cuts letters, shapes, and phrases, on products such as vellum, paper,
cardstock, or vinyl, but has now uses a commercial grade vinyl cutting machine,
which has increased efficiency.
On average, Westfall receives 30 to
35 orders per week.
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Westfall says creating signs that her customers hang in their homes makes her feel like a special part of family memories. |
Small businesses, big sense of
community
Westfall says she’s found the small
business community to be supportive in that other businesses refer clients to
her.
“Kelly Burns [Kelly Burns
Woodworks] always refers people to me,” says Westfall. “He does laser
engraving.”
The camaraderie between business
owners is something Westfall appreciates.
“I really do get a lot of referrals from
people who do similar things,” she says. “And it’s been neat to meet new
people, too, because as a stay-at-home, I don’t get to get out and talk to a
lot of people, so I connect with people through the business.”
Westfall says she makes a point to
use local businesses for her products as well.
“I go to Boone-Kenton Lumber for my
frames. I call in my order – I love the owner, he’s so sweet – and they cut the
frames for me, then I take them home and cut them to the actual size of the
frame that I need,” she says.
Initially, making her mark on the
broader, global marketplace of Etsy, which focuses on handmade or vintage
items, was a challenge.
“I do my business on Etsy, where wooden crafters are a dime a dozen, so it’s hard to get
your stuff out there and get noticed,” says Westfall. “There are people with
thousands and thousands of sales on Etsy, and the more sales you have, the more
you show up in searches. When I first started it was hard to get going.”
Some of her work is going to
clients as far as England.
“It’s funny, I thought it was
Cleveland, Ohio, but it was in England,” says Westfall.
“The shipping was $75, and I
thought, ‘why would it be $75 to Cleveland, Ohio? Then I realized it was going
to England.”
She says many of her clients are in
California and Texas.
“Those are my two biggest states,”
she says.
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Westfall's growing small business in Fort Mitchell is finding customers across as far as England. |
Nuptials and memories
Westfall’s signs have increasingly
become an in-demand item for weddings.
“The big thing now for weddings are
large wood guest books for guests to sign for couples to hang on their walls
instead of traditional guest books, so that’s been huge, and also my ‘welcome’
signs for weddings,” says Westfall.
Westfall has shown her hand-crafted
signs at The Prickel Barn, a new privately-owned wedding and event venue in Verona,
situated on a 200-acre farm, which she describes as “gorgeous.” Her custom
wedding guest books are among her hottest commodities, she says.
For brides and wedding planners,
Westfall’s small business allows for a quick turnaround on her product, and
that can translate into peace of mind for clients.
“I think the biggest thing is that,
because I’m still so little, my processing time is seven to ten days, and a lot
of shops are six to seven weeks,” says Westfall. “Most people don’t want to
wait that long when they order something.”
Westfall says she finds a particular
satisfaction in creating signs with family names. The signs feature a family
name along with significant dates.
“I love seeing all the names with
the dates, and it’s all generations that I make them for,” says Westfall.
“They’re my favorite because I feel like I’m involved in a special moment for
them. And then they hang it in their house and see it every day. It feels
special.”
Westfall says she draws creative
inspiration from designers like HGTV’s Joanna Gaines.
“From a creative standpoint, I love
Joanna Gaines, and farmhouse style,” says Westfall. “My mom and I love to go to
the Burlington Antique Show. I love to find things that look old and are
distressed and worn. I think they look cozier.”
Westfall says she’s begun creating
10 to 15 signs each day – the number contingent upon the how long her children
nap. She says she’ll soon begin making signs for 2018 holiday craft shows at
Ryle High School and Cooper High School.
“I hope to do more this coming
season, but I just don’t know how busy I’ll be,” she says. “It’s a fine line
between balancing the kids and the business.
One of the learning curves as a
small business owner is setting boundaries. Westfall says she’s learned the
importance of knowing when she needs to say ‘no.’
She still finds that her best work
time is after her children are in bed for the evening.
“At night, I stay up way too late,
but it’s my time,” says Westfall. “You pay for it in the morning, but it’s
worth it. After a long day, the kids are down, and you can sit down and do something
that you love, and that you’re contributing financially to the family. And the
kids see their mom is doing something productive.”
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Westfall's learned the craft of woodworking from her father. |
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