Phoenix Feather Woodworking

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United States
Brandon, FL
Phoenix Feather Woodworking

Hand Crafted with Wonder and Imagination.

Phoenix Feather Woodworking is a small, woman-owned woodworking studio in Brandon, FL, handcrafting cutting boards, barn quilts, pet pieces & more — backed by 20+ years of design experience.

08/13/2026

This is the piece that talked me into buying a bandsaw, and it is going to hang on my wall forever as a very pretty receipt.

I usually make my art out of pine and add the color myself with stain, dye, or paint. For this one I wanted the wood to be the palette, so there is no color on it at all. What you are seeing is the natural tone of maple, walnut, and cherry, with a wenge border to frame the whole thing. I love how they sit next to each other. The maple lines carry your eye out to the corners, and the dark border keeps it from floating off the wall.

Now the expensive part. Hardwood costs real money, so I decided to use thin strips instead of building something thick and heavy that would be hard to hang or ship. What I did not know is that buying hardwood already milled to 1/4 inch thick costs more than buying a big board and cutting it down yourself. So I paid a premium for the convenience, and I paid it about forty times over.
I will never be able to sell this piece for what I have in it. So it will forever be in my Zoom background. Every time I see it I get the reminder that if I want to keep making art out of thin strips, I need a bandsaw so I can cut those strips myself.
It is a gorgeous lesson, and I am oddly fine with it. At least it is pretty.

What is the most expensive thing your hobby has ever taught you?

08/12/2026

Here is a small disaster from the shop this week, brought to you by me not reading a label.

I picked up a can of Minwax PolyShades assuming it was a stain. It is not. It is stain with polyurethane already mixed into it, which is a fine product if you are finishing a door or a table in one pass. It is a terrible product for what I am doing, which is coloring a piece built from a lot of small parts before it gets assembled.

Brushing polyurethane onto one little piece at a time gets gummy in a hurry, and by the time I noticed, the surface had that thick, sticky look that no amount of hoping is going to fix.

So I am starting over. The new plan is a plain stain with no polyurethane in it, so the color goes on thin and the grain stays visible, and then I will put my own poly over the entire finished piece at the end. That is how I should have done it the first time, and honestly it is how I have done it every other time, which is the part that stings.

The good news is that starting over on the finish is a lot cheaper than starting over on the woodworking. The bad news is that I now own a can of PolyShades and a grudge.

Have you ever gotten most of the way through a project, at home or at work, before realizing you had the wrong product in your hand the entire time?

08/11/2026

I took on a rush job this week for my toughest client. She is nine hundred percent sure of what she wants, she does not negotiate, and she lives in my house.

My daughter is coming into her own style this year and has decided it is all about hats and jackets. She has built a genuine collection, and it needs to hang somewhere she can reach it every morning while she puts an outfit together. So she asked me for coat racks, and she came with requirements. They had to be red and black. Nothing fancy. Simple, so they match her room. And school starts in less than a week, which left me exactly two lunch hours to build them.

Normally this is the part where I get in my own way. I would rout a nice edge, or curve the top, or add a small shelf, or find some detail that nobody asked for and that adds three days to the timeline. Not this time. These are pine boards with a red stain and five black hooks each, and that is the entire build.

She could not be happier with them, and I have to admit they look good hanging on her wall. Not every piece has to be about beauty. Some are just about function, and it turns out that simple can be beautiful too, especially when it is done on time.

What is the fastest thing you have ever had to build, sew, bake, or fix before a deadline?

08/07/2026

Today is poly day, and that is a real event around here.

I batch all my polyurethane coats into one day and do a pile of projects at once. That sounds efficient, and I would love to take credit for it, but the honest reason is that I have a small shop and my dust collection is not great. If I cut anything, there is dust in the air for a while afterward, and dust in the air will land in a wet finish coat and ruin it. So cutting days and finishing days have to be separate days.

Today I am putting poly on about seven different projects, which means my shop is entirely full of things I am not allowed to touch. It is a strange kind of satisfying to see everything I have been building lined up at once, all of it wet and shiny and finally done.

If you work out of a small shop, I want to know how you deal with dust before you finish something. I am always looking for a better system.

08/06/2026

My kid, unprompted, mid dinner prep: "Mom, how come you're a woodworker and we're using these crappy plastic cutting boards?"

Fair point, child. Devastating, but fair.
That weekend we got an upgrade, and the plastic ones are long gone. This is the board that lives on my counter now. It is solid maple, edge grain, and has rubber feet so it doesn't slide around while we work, and it is only about 12x12 inches.

Here's my slightly controversial opinion: most cutting boards being made right now are too big. They look incredible in photos, but do you really want to wrestle a 40 pound slab out of a lower cabinet just to chop half an onion? A 12x12 handles the vast majority of what a home kitchen actually asks of it, and because it's manageable, it stays out on the counter where you'll actually use it. And stare at it, and admire it - just me?

It gets used almost every single day and still looks great. 10 out of 10, and I would take home decor advice from a small human again.

What are you cutting on these days, wood or plastic? Be honest. My kid already did the judging for all of us.

08/05/2026

The Official Workshop Puppy made a surprise visit to the shop today. He conducted a Quality Control Inspection and I am pleased to announce Phoenix Feather Woodworking passed with flying colors!

08/04/2026

This house number sign has a bit of a backstory. The cedar came from an old playset my kids had outgrown and weren't using anymore. Instead of it heading to the curb, I gave it a new life as something the whole family (and everyone who walks up to the door) gets to see every day.
It is laid in a modern herringbone pattern with metal house numbers, and fully sealed for outdoor use, so it's built to hold up on a porch or exterior wall for years to come.

A little bit of sentimental value, a lot of curb appeal.

08/02/2026

I smashed glue into the grain when I tried to fill a crack, and I did not find out until I went to stain it and those spots would not accept any color at all. I was fairly sure the piece was ruined.

What saved it was wood dye and a paint brush. I mixed brown, orange, red, and a little bit of black and hand-painted the grain back in over the glue spots. One of them is still rough because it is too full of glue to take anything, but the rest of it blends well enough that I am keeping it.

It is going to be a welcome sign for my dad. He also owns the coaster I sanded to 600 grit and sealed with polyurethane, so every drink he sets on it slides right off, and I fully expect he will love this one too.

If you glue anything up this weekend, wipe your squeeze-out before it sets and DO NOT sand glue into your piece. Learn from me.

Has glue ever ruined a stain job on you?

07/30/2026

From deep rose to soft blush to white, this barn quilt is a study in pink. Just under 100 individually cut pieces, sanded, planed, and hand assembled into an eight-point star that fades from the outside in.

Every piece I make is cut and painted by hand, so the shading and the small imperfections are part of what makes each one one-of-a-kind.
👉 https://phoenixfeatherwoodworking.com/shop/

07/28/2026

Nearly 200 individual pieces. One single pine board. Zero shortcuts.

This 18" x 18" barn quilt started life as a plain 1"x4" board, and every one of those pieces was hand cut, stained, and painted before it ever became this star. Teal, gray, and white, with a rich stained border to finish it off.

Like every piece I make, no two are painted exactly alike. The small variations are part of what makes it yours.

👉 https://phoenixfeatherwoodworking.com/shop/

Address

Brandon, FL
33511

Website

https://phoenixfeatherwoodworking.com/

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