Star Cottage Studio

After being in business with Allegory Gallery for ten years, in the winter of 2021 (during the pandemic), we took a look at this building just a few miles down the road. Andrew's studio had, up until this point, been a 10' x 10' room that is the guest bedroom in our home. In this studio, he was able to produce some amazing work, but having space for so many different discipline set-ups was not easy. In that studio he painted, made molds and cast resin, worked in precious metal clay, did copper and silver smithing, and more.

After looking at this building, we fell in love with it and its history. It used to be a one-room school house that was moved to this location sometime in the early 1900s. From there, it changed hands a few times and more and more rooms were added on. We purchased it from a wonderful woman who ran it with her husband as the Schocalog Shoppe. They specialized in antiques, candles, potpourri, and Americana decor. By the time we found it, it had sat empty for about ten years, so there was a lot of work that needed to be done, but we just fell in love with its charm and history. So, we took a leap of faith, and purchased the building.

Over the years, we've invested a lot into it. We've redone the electrical and upgraded it to commercial levels. We've had the floors redone and worked on a lot of the inside of the building to make it useable. Unfortunately, there was never plumbing in the building, so we brought in a portable sink for our studio, and we're still working on other solutions. Things like these take time when you're a small business. But, we love our cottage, and we invest into it anytime we're able.

Star Cottage Studio functions as many things for us. We have been able to move everything out of our house and create lots of areas for our business. One room is devoted to our metal studio. This includes many of the tools we need to do copper and silver smithing as well as enameling, powder-coating, and more. We are also in the process of setting up our own silver and bronze casting room. This is super exciting to us, and we can't wait to be able to produce our own creations this way in metal!

We've also moved our online shipping department out of the physical store and into Star Cottage Studio. And, we also have a small filming set up there where we film our lives and YouTube tutorials. In addition to all of this, we also have a room we lovingly call "The Bead Room". This houses our inventory of personal beads that we use in our jewelry creations and also sell on our lives each weeknight. And, we still have an entire upstairs area that's currently used for storage, but we hope to turn it into office space or possibly artist housing when we're able to do so.

So, that's Star Cottage Studio and our current story—which is ongoing! Future plans include reworking some of the spaces so that we can have classes and private spaces available for others so that we can have friends over. We're currently working on rearranging the space, and while it's a huge undertaking, we can't wait to be able to have friends over for lots of great creative energy and making sessions!

If you'd like to keep in touch with the things we do at Star Cottage Studio, one of the best ways is to join our Patreon. We give a lot of sneak peeks there of the new things that we're working on, and you'll also see lots of behind the scenes details. All of the money that we receive from our Patreon goes into our business. Oftentimes, it goes into our studio for upkeep or helps with some part of our research & development or educational offerings.

You can also join our Star Cottage Studio Facebook page. Once we have classes available, we will post information there and update that page more frequently.