Two artists + two dogs + woodworking + polymer clay = Fat Duck Designs

Heather Graves

Staff

December 23, 2024

TREMPEALEAU – Artsy couple Kyle and Caryn Breunig said most journeys in life are not linear – and for them, “that’s the best part.”

“I believe the curly-que’s of life’s path are really where the best stuff is,” Caryn said.

Those “curly-ques,” as she describes them, led her to husband, Kyle, to their family of furry babies and their now shared creative passion – Fat Duck Designs.

Hatching ideas

Though Fat Duck Designs started only about two years ago, Caryn said she and Kyle have always been creative souls.

Meeting on Tinder in 2016, Caryn said they were immediately drawn to each other’s individual passions for creating things – and their respective pups.

Originally from Sauk Prairie, Kyle said he made his way to West Central Wisconsin for college – earning a bachelor’s degree in visual communications at Viterbo University.

After graduating, he said he worked in graphic design for a handful of years before deciding to move into general construction – a career that further sparked his interest in woodworking.

Caryn said Kyle’s first “big tool” was a scroll saw he used in one of his college apartment bedrooms – “I’m sure his neighbors loved that.”

Kyle said he’s been woodworking more heavily since 2016 – “I kind of bought my house for that purpose.”

The years since, he said, have been spent “self-teaching, researching and honing and refining my skills.”

Though she lived in several places throughout Wisconsin during her childhood, Caryn said she attended high school in Mondovi before moving on to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communication.

“I worked in corporate marketing for about five-ish years and have been in IT for the last seven years now,” she said.

Though dabbling in their respective hobbies – Kyle in woodworking and Caryn in polymer clay – on the side for many years, Caryn said they started to look at their interests as more than just hobbies right before their wedding.

“We had a very do-it-yourself wedding, and so we set a lot of time and space aside for ourselves leading up to our wedding to focus on the creative side projects for the wedding,” she said.

Once the wedding passed, Caryn said they found that they missed the creative outlet the wedding projects provided them.

“It kind of made sense for us to start collaborating at that point,” she said.

Though the couple said they didn’t initially set out to start a business, when finished projects started to pile up, Caryn said the transition to start Fat Duck Designs seemed like a natural progression.

“We’re both very much homebody introverts, and we love creating,” she said. “We didn’t necessarily have the idea of pursuing a business, but it got to the point like, ‘holy cow, we have so much stuff in our house, we should do something with it. We should try and sell it.’”

Hearing positive feedback from their friends and family, the Breunigs said, also inspired them to pursue building a business.

“It’s been very validating to hear the really kind things that people have to say,” she said. “Obviously, it started with our family and friends, and they’re obviously a little biased and say really sweet things, but to hear the things that strangers – people we’ve never met – utter under their breath as they’re walking past our things is resoundingly positive.”

Individual wheelhouses

Caryn said though they collaborate on some projects, her and Kyle’s creative focuses are very different and unique to them.

“Kyle is a woodworker and has a soft spot for working with walnut,” she said. “I am a polymer clay earring maker and have a soft spot for all things rose gold and sparkly.”

Kyle said his favorite part of woodworking is taking a piece of wood he has on hand and seeing what he can create with it.

“Right now for me, I’m in a position where a lot of the stuff I’m making just more so comes to me versus commission pieces,” he said. “I do have commission pieces, but the stuff that I’m really enjoying doing is when I can look at a piece, figure out what I can do with it and take it from there. I would say my favorite part is letting my creativity come out in the pieces.”

With polymer clay being “such a diverse medium,” Caryn said “you really never run out of techniques or things to try.”

“I can look at a photo of a naturescape and pull the colors from that and create a really beautiful like agate or a geode-type pattern,” she said. “There are endless ways to create with it and manipulate it that it almost feels like you have unlimited resources to play with.”

There’s always a story

The Breunigs said they are often asked where the Fat Duck Designs name came from.

The answer, Caryn said, is a direct connection to the couple’s other passion – their pups Griff (a golden doodle) and Mallard (a red tick coon hound).

“When we met, we each had a dog,” she said. “I had the fat, fluffy Griff. He is your quintessential chunky, lazy dog that enjoys eating literally everything in sight.”

Kyle had Mallard, who Caryn said has 16 different nicknames that eventually evolved into “Duck.”

“She’s a neurotic coon hound that absolutely has the run of our lawn and lives her best life here,” she said. 

As soon as the couple’s two dogs met, Caryn said they nearly immediately settled into “an annoying little sister and grumpy old man dynamic.”

“They are a goofy-looking pair together – they make no sense together,” she said. “It kind of just makes sense to name the business after our dogs. A lot of people will name their business after their children or grandparents or something like that. For us, it just felt fitting to name it after our dogs.”

From the beginning, Caryn said people have responded well to the Fat Duck name and logo.

“It evokes a lot of joy for people,” she said. “You can’t look at a fat waddling duck and have a super bad day.”

A fulfilling task

Caryn said knowing the pieces they create will eventually find their way into someone’s home is the cherry on top of the creative process.

“It’s been cool to know that the stuff we make in our home and our wood shop is going to be in a space in someone else’s home – that it’s going to be the item that they look at and think, ‘Oh, I love that’ – is really fulfilling for us,” she said.

Kyle said when he sees someone’s face light up when they see one of his pieces – “witnessing the moment they fall in love with a piece – is very validating.”

“A lot of people that come through, even if they don’t buy anything, will stop and say, ‘I really like your stuff,’ or ‘you can tell that your stuff is really well made,’” he said.

Caryn said “watching the gears grind” in customers’ expressions when they see the creations of Fat Duck Designs is one of her favorite parts of the business.

“They kind of look at us with this really confused look on their face and say, ‘you guys make this stuff?’” she said. “It’s a genuine and wholesome shock.”

Caryn said they are often told, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I think it is one of the coolest compliments, because everybody wants to feel unique, especially in that artistic space, and to hear that from complete strangers who don’t have to say anything to us, is a cool thing,” she said.

When asked how they balance the creative pursuits of Fat Duck Designs while still working full-time, the Breunigs had very different responses.

“Mostly, I just don’t sleep,” Kyle laughed.

Caryn, on the other hand, said she’s a nine-hours-of-sleep-a-night kind of gal – “or nobody would want to hang out with me.”

“I would say that’s probably been the harder balance for us to find – the work/creative work balance especially during the ‘busy season for markets’ – we try and allow ourselves what averages out to be one market a month, and that seems to be kind of what we’re capable of getting inventory for,” she said. 

Caryn said it’s a “delicate balance” that they are still figuring out.

“It helps that we are husband and wife, so even if we are working on our crafts, we can still kind of hang out together,” she said. “I can just pop out to the wood shop and visit him if I’m having a creative block or vice versa.”

Where to find Fat Duck Designs

In addition to setting up shop at local markets and craft shows throughout the region at various points in the year, Caryn said Fat Duck Designs products are also available for purchase online (fatduckdesigns.com), as well as at a handful of West Central Wisconsin shops – including The Station coffee shop in Trempealeau and The Groovy Grind in Galesville.

“We do have a website, but having a gallery of photos is a little tough, as is keeping the inventory up to date, because every single piece that we make is so unique,” she said. “We don’t batch things out.”

Caryn said Fat Duck Designs’ primary mode of communication is through social media.

“The majority of the people reach out to us over Facebook and Instagram through direct messaging,” Kyle said.

The future…

Caryn and Kyle said they have talked a lot about the future “in a vague, dreamy kind of way.”

“I think the dream of any artist or any creative soul is to be able to do that full-time,” Caryn said. “We would love to get to a point with our creations that we could take that full-time, but it’s certainly scary to make that leap to that kind of not-guaranteed income.”

Anybody who has ever owned a small business or started a small business, Caryn said, “can relate to the baseline fear that’s behind that uncertainty.”

“But ideally, we’d love to work for each other and really see what we can grow this company into,” she said.