Welcome to our website shop. My name is Carol Costin and I work this shop with my husband Tim Costin and daughter Melanie Nickell. We’ve been in North Carolina since 1997. We have 2 wonderful children. We also have three dogs we rescued, Sophie, Rocky and Maddie. We started on this crazy adventure in 2005. Before that we were both in the IT field. I am still in the field but Tim, as luck would have it, was laid off on Valentines Day 2002. That’s when he started his career in Real Estate.

Not long after this our focus changed when my mom passed away. I was extremely depressed, as you can imagine. So to cheer me up, Tim took me to a Log Home Expo in Raleigh. There we saw a man demonstrating a high speed hand tool he used to carve designs into egg shells, wood and etch on glass. I was fascinated. So, Tim went ahead and purchased the tool for me, thinking it would be great for me to have something to do to take my mind off my troubles. I have been doing craft work since I was a little girl so it was not a big stretch for me to pick this up. At that point Tim said “Hey, what about me?” Feeling a little left out, he wanted to have some fun too. So I agreed that if he found something he wanted to do to go for it. That was a big mistake.

He dug into research like crazy. That’s when he found etched and carved glass. It was love at first sight. That’s when he found Norm and Ruth Dobbins. Norm was known as the godfather of etched glass art. They were doing a seminar at one of the trade shows in Charlotte, NC. We attended, met Norm and Ruth, and he decided right then and there this is what he wanted to do. He scheduled a class with them and off he went to New Mexico. I’ll tell you that story another time. To say he had a great time is an understatement. I was not happy that I couldn’t go due to work commitments. However, Tim came home and proceeded to teach me everything he learned. That’s where our etching career started. Other than being trained by Norm and Ruth Dobbins, we are heavily influenced by Butch Young, another well respected artist in this business. We’ve expanded our offerings to include the color printing and pressing because we were being asked if we could engrave in color. Since engraving in color is impossible, we needed to find a way to offer our clients a color option. And we’ve been doing this ever since.

We have now expanded our business to include laser engraving and UV color printing.  This has expanded our product offerings which has enhanced our business greatly.