I became the mother of a beautiful little girl in December of 2010, and my amazing little boy was born in June of 2013. Becoming a mother I have had to face the "do I work or stay home?" nonsense. I managed to stay home for about 5 months (not long enough for me with my daughter) before having to get back out there and find work. My husband was wanting a new leather top hat... so we wandered down to the nearest leather store to see what it would take to make our own. After a few minutes of talking with the manager, he was offered a job. Sadly he had to turn it down because his work just offered him a higher paying position... but not me! I needed to get a job! I got myself hired and within a month of working I was told to pick up a swivel knife and some stamps and my manager (who happened to be a custom saddle maker and leather worker for about 20 years) taught me everything he knew. I enjoyed the tooling and everything but it just wasn't my style to do all of the traditional western floral patterns. I sat down on a break one day and looked at my bag, which was a child's Transformers game bag, and I thought well why couldn't I just tool that?! So I did! I'm a big child at heart and hope to stay that way, I have tooled every cartoon, comic, and video game character I love and boy has it caught on around me. I've turned a fun new hobby into work and not in a bad way. My husband suggested to me that he would love a tooled leather deck box for his MTG cards and business picked up from there, starting with a few friends then onto a local comic and game store, and now here on etsy. Childcare is far too expensive these days and it seems to work a regular job, my whole months pay would go to paying for childcare so its easier for me to stay home and do what I love, being with my children and creating things.