Twigs Life Story

Primitive Blessings by Twigs n Sprigs
Tiffany Laine Wigginton Carnal
aka: Twigs

 Folks often ask me about how I got started in this business, along with questions about my life. Since I tossed myself into this business nearly 20 years ago, and took up many other adventures along the way, I reckon it is time I shared my story and my life with my friends and fellow readers. So grab yourself a cup of something and sit down for its time for me to gab a bit.

Some might say it is luck to do what you love, others might say it’s a curse.

I can honestly say its hereditary.

If you are a true primitive lover, you love the history that goes along with the old stuff we love to collect, so here goes my life story the history of Twigs.

In the late 1800’s Rebecca Blackford Wigginton also known as Nannie would spend her free time away from the children sitting with chalk, pencil or paint and create wonderful paintings and portraits. She created the most amazing chalk drawing of sheep that is simply divine. She had a son named Holly Blackford Wigginton and in the early 1900’s he fell in love with Miss Rebecca Clark and together they had a dream of becoming entrepreneurs. They began peddling old time wares in the small town of Williamstown, Kentucky. Before long they married and together raised their children to help run the store. Their business had grown so much that in 1923, they had built a huge brick storefront and named it Wigginton & Clark. It was a wonderful building in its day, it housed the most wonderful dresses and suits and textiles in town. Their son Edwin Blackford was a wonderful man who had a heart of gold. He worked hard to keep the family name and to help those in need.

Several towns over in Fagan, Kentucky was a wonderful country family by the name of Neal. James Wilson and Olenice began selling feed and seed to the farmers back then. They ran their general store out of an old building with shotguns on the front porch. They helped the needy and taught their kids how to work hard and make do with what you have. Their daughter Sadie Mae was a hard worker, she worked the fields and helped in the Mill along with making dresses & quilts.

*****The Neals General Store*****

*****My Grandmother Sadie Mae Neal Pelfrey*****

*****My Grandfather Robert Clarence Pelfrey*****

Little did both families know that they were building a dream for generations to come along with leaving behind wonderful handmade heirlooms. As love would have it. Edwin’s son William Raymond married Sadie Mae’s daughter Judith Ann and together they had 3 children one of them being me, Tiffany Laine Wigginton, aka Twigs

*****My Daddy Billy Rae Wigginton*****

*****My Mama Judith Ann Pelfrey*****

***Tiffany Laine, Krista Lynn, Ricky Allen Wigginton***

Growing up, we lived on the 3rd floor of the Wigginton Building. Living in town, I often strolled my dog, Parfait (Tea cup toy poodle), & my many baby dolls, down the street. They often wore dresses I had made from scraps of fabric or if I was really lucky, my Great Aunt Nancye would give me children’s clothes from the children’s department store. Later I ventured into making money with my lemonade stands or playing storekeeper in the huge basement of my Grandfather’s shop. I remember spending hours in the store cellar finding old treasures that Grandpa had tossed away. My tin doll house being one of my favorite finds. So I suppose that dumpster diving and retailing are truly in my blood.

Idell Mitchell was a woman of great inspiration to me. She was my dad’s Nanny all his childhood years. Idell was special, she lived by herself, behind the store in her little white house at the bottom of the hill. When she died no one really knew her age for she had lied about it. We believe she was over 100, Every day I would venture to visit her. I have fond memories of her baking me wonderful homemade cookies while I pretended to make mud pies and cook them on the bricks she had made me to resemble a stove. I would assume that my love for black dollies, childhood dishes, pots and pans are of my memories with her.

*****Idell Mitchell*****

My mother had a busy life as I was growing up. She ventured in owning her own clothing store in the family building, traveling around witnessing to folks as a gospel singer & being a missionary when I was young. She also worked for the local newspaper, then in my teenage years became a travel agent. I always remember my mother writing in her journals, singing & praising the Lord while working hard to support our family.

My father took on the family tradition of working in the family business, & later ventured on his own in retail. He owned a ceramic shop during my childhood years & I loved it. Oh, how I would sculpt & paint & create things from my heart. My most prize possession during that time was a child’s tea pot I created. Both of my parents loved antiques & Daddy’s last business venture was an antique shop. When I was 11 yrs old, Daddy became critically ill with Chronic Hepatitis C. He had a life & death experience & lived the last years of his life as a deacon of our church & raising his children to know the Lord. He truly had a glimpse of Heaven’s gates & he wanted everyone to know about the love of the Lord.

Throughout my life I recall tragedies that have happened to our family that have made us stronger. When I was 13, my father became permanently disabled. That same year my brother passed away , I witnessed the loss of a sibling and how it broke my parents hearts to loose a child. That same year my Sister, Krista got married and left the house. The fall of that year, the Wigginton building the place we called home burnt to the ground. With only the clothes on our backs, we had to start over. I believe the only good thing to happen that year was I became an Aunt.

*****My Brother Ricky Allen Wigginton*****

Shortly after the fire, my parents bought a house not too far from town, and moved my grandparents in with us to so we could tend to them as well. Caring for my sick father and along with my grandfather who had a stroke and could not talk or walk is what our family did, on a daily basis. It was hard & the burden rested on my mother to make the living for our family. We grew stronger from it & survived.

 Down in the basement of our newfound home was a cellar room. Together my Dad and I painted and put shelving and furniture in there to create my own studio. I spent many hours pouring out my heart in that little room. I wrote children stories & poetry. I was always drawing & painting, as well as working on calligraphy.  I loved working with textiles & even designed my prom dress, which my mother made for me. I had a passion for writing, art, & economics. I had 3 great teachers that stand out in my mind, Tanya Poer, Jeannie Broyles, & Ruthe Wyman. They all taught me things that I now use in my life & in my business on a daily basis.

 Children were always dear to my heart & it was at a young age that Tanya Poer asked me to help her with the abused children in our community. The impact of that experience changed my life forever. During my high school years I began working in retail in a little clothing shop. After graduating, I ventured on my own & started college, while working as a retail merchandising manager.  I then changed jobs & held a clerical position in the emergency room of a local hospital.

It wasn’t long before I was designing my own wedding gown, & making floral arrangements for my wedding.  I married & my husband and he joined the Marines. We packed our bags & moved to the shores of North Carolina, & I became a military wife.

 Daddy loved treasure hunting and was always blessing me with antique gifts. His last gift to me was a heartfelt surprise. He had gone treasure hunting and came across a wonderful old looking child’s tea pot. When he picked it up he knew it indeed was a rare piece. He wrapped it up and gave it to me as a gift. I was excited to get a blessing from my father and when I opened it, it looked familiar. I turned it over to find my name was engraved on the bottom of the pot. It was one of my childhood creations I had made in his ceramic shop. We have no idea how it ended up at that yard sale that day, but God knew we needed it. That was the last gift my Daddy gave me before he went to be with the Lord.

****My Tea Pot*****

Living away from my family, and the reality of Daddy in heaven God knew I needed something to occupy my time. We decided to help the less fortunate in the area & my heart was tugged to help children.  We became the foster parents of 2 little girls who were half sisters.

 

*Casie Meagan and Deven Leigh a few months after we got them*

After purchasing a new home, it was time to decorate. Looking through magazines, catalogs & browsing stores, it became evident to me on a military budget that I had to be creative. It was then that I decided to use my talents & make the things I wanted for our new home. Before long, friends & family began asking for my creations. After having the girls 3 years, they became available for adoption & the excitement of having a permanent family was overwhelming & a joyous time. My husband got out of the military & joined the local police force. I ventured out into doing craft shows & selling wholesale to shops around our area.

Life couldn’t have been more complete with the adoption drawing near. The finalization week, one of the girls biological father came forward and fought us for custody. We decided it was not fair to our children to separate them nor to have them taken from the only parents they ever knew or remembered. Something in my heart said "Protect her", & the legal battle began.

I began designing & doing home shows to pay the legal bills. After a lengthy precedent court battle, we won custody of our beautiful little girl. However, the stress caused my husband to leave us. The end result being that our daughter at 6 and a half yrs old was sent off to live with strangers. Separated from her sister & only parents she had ever known, my heart was broken. I became a single mother & had to find a way to put food on the table.

 

*****Just Me and Casie*****

My sister introduced me to the World Wide Web and some would say the rest is history but I suppose I can continue rambling on with my life story. Designing & selling primitive & country crafts became the world in which I surrounded myself. I made a new life for myself & for my darling little daughter.  I enrolled back in college with plans to work in the teaching field, however that was short lived, for God had other plans for me. 

*****Me and my sister Krista Lynn*****

 It was then that God sent me my backbone, the man I now call my husband, Bruce Carnal.

*****Msgt. Bruce A. Carnal*****

He began working with me to expand my business of Twigs n Sprigs. Together we peddled our wares to shows & shops in our area. I grieved for the daughter we lost. Bruce encouraged me to never lose my faith about having her return home some day. He picked me up when I was weak & gave me the courage to continue to do what I loved. I am so thankful to God, & blessed to have this man in my life and as my husband.

*****The Carnals*****

I had always wanted a house full of children, so we began a family. Just 4 days after giving birth to our daughter, Lyndi Elaine, we discovered after 16 months, my little girl, had been abused by her biological father & step-mother, & had been living in foster care over a year in Texas. We immediately began fighting to get her back.  With the help of God, a jury awarded us custody. She has been reunited with her sister and has been home now over 7 years. We believe that God will continue to protect her & provide the means for us to keep her safe, loved, & nurtured with the family of her heart.

 

*****Our Daughter Lyndi Elaine Carnal*****

While chatting with friends on the Internet & joining boards & groups who chat about the crafting passion I so loved, “Primitives”. Folks on the boards seldom used their real names, until they get to know you. I shortened my business name and typed in “Twigs” before long it stuck.  It’s common now to answer the phone & hear folks ask for Twigs.

 In the mid 90’s, websites were becoming the thing for everyone to have to peddle their wares so that was what I learned to do. With the help of my friend Liz, she helped me build my site. It wasn’t long before I had so much business that I couldn’t keep up with manufacturing my primitive goods, so I decided to branch out & design one of a kind wares & create pattern packets for primitive crafters.

 Being a web designer, one needs graphics. It was then out of pure determination that I taught myself how to create graphics. Shortly after I figured it out, I began sharing them with the world, along with designing custom logos for companies. I expanded my line of Doodles & Designs into primitive stationery, notepads, cards & rubberstamps. I have great plans to expand my collections into the scrap booking industry. 

My husband had served 20 yrs in the United States Marine Corps & it was time to retire & choose a place to call our forever home. We packed our possessions and 3 girls & headed to the hills of Kentucky, and landed in Henry County. We immediately fell in love with this community & the ‘salt of the earth’ folks who would help anyone out, even strangers. Most people just read about fresh-baked cookies & breads being delivered to your home, homegrown produce left on your doorstep by kind neighbors, & folks coming out of the tobacco fields to lend a hand. You know, Mayberry, TV for some folks, but for us it was reality. Port Royal/Lacie is a place of true kinship & hospitality, a place we are proud to call home.

 As I began talking to primitive folks from all over the world, I opened up an online board called Primitive Ponderings ("The Pond"). The place where we go to share our lives, our hopes, our dreams, pray, & talk about the things we hold dear to our hearts, & of course primitive crafting & decorating. I began hosting primitive gatherings in our home for local friends who liked to craft. Once a month they would come & we would eat, craft & gab. I then ventured out to hosting Twigs Gatherings where folks from all over, who loved primitives, could come to our home, gather & create primitive wares, share what we know, & help each other out. Before long, I had folks flying in from as far as England (My dear friends Meryl & Hillary, God Bless You) to craft and share with me.

While pregnant with my last child, I nearly died of a deep vein thrombosis & a hematoma. God blessed me to be the mother of a son, William Alexander Carnal. Shortly after my long recovery, he became very ill with muscular dystonic reaction, along with whooping cough. After several weeks in intensive care, lots of prayers, & a miracle from God, my son came home. With my strength coming back more every day I knew it was time to get back to work. It didn’t take long to get back into the swing of things and before long had several companies asking me to design for them. It has been a wonderful adventure to see my designs in textiles, resin, tin and stamps.

 

*****Our Son William Alexander Carnal*****

3 miles down the road from our farmhouse sat an old abandoned general store in the ‘so-called’ town of Lacie. We passed this rickety ole shack every day while going to & fro. Honestly, I never paid any attention to it. I was with my friend, Darlene, one day, & she said, “You need to buy that store in Lacie & make it your gift shop”. It wasn’t long before I was the proud owner of that wonderful, dilapidated building. I tell you God is soo good, he blessed me with that store for $10,000. It has a history that I just love. It was built back during the 1800’s. The old building housed the town store, creamery, & the area’s blacksmith. Its old structure has hard wood floors with old license plates to cover the mice holes. It has wooden shelving, the original cash register, & 2 old amazing mercantile counters. Tis heaven to me and primitively perfect for my shop.

 

*****The Lacie General Store*****

With a lot of hard work & tender, loving care, along with help from my family, friends & our local Amish friends, we began restoring the old building. Before long, we were ready to open a few days a week for business.  Learning that there were 2 other businesses named Twigs & Sprigs within a few hour’s radius, we decided to add “Primitive Blessings” to our name. Primitive Blessings by Twigs n Sprigs was a dream but now reality, it’s the place I go to design my primitive goods, share my wares with folks, craft with folks, gab with folks and eat with folks and putting the little town of Lacie back on the map. We have resurrected the building, but still have more work to be done & have even greater plans for it in the future.

*****Primitive Blessings by Twigs n Sprigs*****

Shortly after purchasing the store, it became apparent that we needed the storekeepers house that was built right beside the shop. However it needed a lot of work and Bruce truthfully wanted to just light a stick of dynamite to it and start over. But I knew it had good bones and me loving the things of old knew we could transform it into our forever home. So 2 yrs ago with sledge hammers in hand we began tearing out every lathe and plaster wall in the house. After years of collecting magazines I began tearing out every picture that I loved and browsing the websites of folks home to get ideas for my forever home. After gathering up tongue and groove wide pine boards, old century color paints and the help of our Amish friends they resurrected it into our new homestead. Lord knows I have collected so many crocks, jars, jugs, samplers and primitive wares to fill two homes but they are all pieces of the past that are dear to my heart.

I began writing again & sharing my life mishaps & happiness with my online friends at the pond.  Folks have told me several times over the years that I should publish my works, or create a primitive magazine, which I thought would be fun, but I couldn’t afford to do it, & I did not have the time to invest in such a time-consuming project.

 God’s timing & dreams for me are more perfect than I could imagine.  On a summer day while designing in my shop, the phone rang & it was Fay Stanfield, of Country Past-Thymes.  She was in search of someone to help her create a primitive magazine & was given my name by an online friend. She wanted someone who had artistic abilities & knowledge of graphics, along with writing skills. We immediately felt like we were Kindred Souls. The passion we both had for this adventure was exciting.  I immediately became thrilled to help her & knew there was a market for a primitive magazine. Together, we have been working hard to make Mercantile Gatherings the best primitive magazine around.  I am so thankful for Fay, without her you wouldn’t be reading this right now. She truly is a blessing & a person I treasure as a true friend.

*****Twigs n Fay*****

As I began thinking of what I wanted to do with my life, I realized God has blessed me to be an artist, designer & writer.  To be able to share my designs in textiles, tin, paper & rubber is amazing to me. He gives me the ability to write about folks with an old time flare and share primitives with the world.

I feel so blessed that God chose me to be the mother of 4 beautiful children, to be the wife of a wonderful, honest dedicated, hardworking man & to be the owner of unique primitive store. I am so grateful that He instilled within me the desire & the talent to design creations to bless the lives of others., which truly is a blessing.

My husband and I have dreams of growing old together we often snicker & think about our favorite song by Tim McGraw. Of changed I changed the words to my liking.

 I want to live where the BLUE grass grows.
Watch my herbs pop up in rows. (sweet annie of course)

Every night be tucked in close to you.
Raise our kids where the Good Lord’s blessed
Point our rocking chairs towards the west,
And plant our dreams were the Ohio River Flows,
Where the Blue Grass Grows,
Kentucky.

 

May God pour out his blessings upon each and every one of you!!

 

Twigs