Estil Home launched in 2019 as an online dried flower bar, which grew over time into fresh and dried flower arrangements and home decor. Here's a glimpse into how that became what we are today.
I'd worked as an interior decorator, both for myself and on contract for other companies, and tried to keep projects going around a newborn. Three in the morning was often the only quiet stretch I had. It became too much to juggle, and I knew I needed to step back and be fully present for those early months with my daughter. So I started the online store instead — something I could run entirely on my own terms. It did well, until COVID, and then a flood took a lot of that away too.
About three years ago, I picked up ceramics, trying to build a range of wall lights. I loved the process, but not the results. Pieces shrank in the kiln, cracked, or simply didn't survive the firing. After the third failed batch of the same design, I started looking for something else.
That's when a conversation with my Dad, Jon, turned into a "what if." We'd often talked about designing lighting together, and that conversation turned toward what 3D printing could actually do. Dad designs and prints mutes for instruments — small engineered pieces that shape the sound a particular instrument produces — and he's even dabbled in prosthetics that let people play instruments they otherwise couldn't. I was still doing floristry and interior styling on the side, and kept running into the same problem: ceramics are heavy and fragile, and they don't survive being loaded in and out of a van for an event. 3D printing opened up other possibilities.
The first two pieces we ever printed were vases, made for my daughter's birthday party — close cousins of what would later become Form. They looked right, but they couldn't hold water. We'd printed them in PLA; moving to PETG solved that — it's a little stronger, and easier to make watertight. It also suited how we wanted to work going forward: PETG is something we can send to commercial recycling facilities, and we're working on recycling our own filament too. It's an ever-evolving landscape, and we'll keep taking steps toward it. No material is without trade-offs — ceramics included — but this felt like the most honest fit for what we make.
Tech Tone Mutes runs the same way — solar powered, with its own filament recycling in the works. Seems some things just run in the family.
That's the short version of how an online dried flower bar became a design studio built around 3D printing, light, one very patient dad, and a shared passion.