Behind the mustache

After years of working as an art director for advertising agencies from Orlando to Honolulu, I now delight in telling people I make mustaches for a living, out of my home in El Paso, Texas. My name is Amber and I'm a vegetarian, Army wife, sister to seven amazing people, and guardian to two fantastic kitties. I love gardening, have visited more than 40 states and really enjoy watching Jeopardy and Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my husband, Alex.

An average day for me starts at dawn, with an hour or two of responding to e-mails and organizing a production list for the day. Then I'll move outside to finish up props – sanding the rough spots and drilling holes for the dowels. I finish them up with a washing and hot glue gun. Packing and shipping comes next, a process that consumes a couple hours. From there, I'll spend the rest of my day pouring polymers for new props, photographing and creating new listings, or catching up on more e-mail. It adds up to a lot of hours, but I enjoy the work – because the world could use a few more mustaches.

How Whisker Works came to be

My husband and I celebrated our marriage in October, 2009, and at the reception I displayed a dozen handmade mustaches on sticks alongside disposable cameras for guests to have fun with. They were a huge hit and we received countless compliments from friends and family. Better than that, we have photos that show the happiness and hilarity the mustaches brought to our wedding – they're easily some of our favorite photos from that night.

After a couple of months in rural Missouri, where we relocated for Alex's Army career, I realized I needed to find a creative outlet – and the wedding mustaches kept getting me compliments. I decided to see if anyone out there might want to have some of their own. The day I signed up for a shop on Etsy, I had my first sale! Eventually after a couple hundred sales, and the feeling as though this might be bigger than I expected, I decided Whisker Works deserved its own place on the Web. And here we are, over 16,000 props later!

My mustache philosophy

Male and female, young and old, these silly mustaches and lips bring friends and family together in a hilarious way. I'd call that a successful ingredient for any celebration.