Date: Fri 19-Jan-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-10

Quick Words:

Tancy-Gemza-Birdhouses-Fancy

Full Text:

(feature on Tancy Gemza/Tancy's Fancy Birdhouses, 1/19/96)

A Christmas Project Takes on A Life of Its Own-

Tancy's Fancy Birdhouses

(with photos)

By Shannon Hicks

A tiny seed planted itself in the mind of Tancy Gemza late last year, and

after creating a wonderful gift idea to give her mother for the holidays,

word-of-mouth interest has grown from family and friends into what could

become an exciting new enterprise for the Appleblossom Lane resident.

Tancy, who shares her Newtown home with husband Neal Rogan and their dog

Mickey, wasn't thinking of starting a business when she decorated three

birdhouses for her mother last year. She was simply coming up with something

nice - something hand made - she could present to her mother Christmas

morning.

"At Christmas my family, like a lot of other families, loves to do homemade

gifts for each other, besides buying something," Tancy said last week.

"I made three [birdhouses] for my mother to choose from, and she couldn't

choose," she continued. Tancy ended up giving her mother three birdhouses -

she had originally planned one for her mother, one for herself and the third

for her sister, Marcie Raymond - after her mother fell in love with all three.

Tancy has come up with the idea of taking the small houses - purchased at

craft stores and made of various unfinished woods - and giving each a personal

touch. She primes each house she buys, putting on three to four coats of paint

before she even starts putting on the intricate decorations that give each

house its individuality. To some, she adds shutters made for dollhouses to

some of them for an extra touch, even bleaching the shingles before putting

them onto the house, while other maintain the original roof they came with.

The detail and attention paid every house is what makes each a remarkable

piece of work. Being extremely near-sighted, Tancy gets pretty close to her

work ("That's how I usually see things anyway," she says with her contagious

laugh), which allows her to put in the tiny touches of a flower's stem or the

leaves of winding ivy.

Each house has something different on it - the ones in the front hall of Tancy

and Neal's home had whimsical scenes with honey bees and their hive, rose

trellises, hot air balloons; one had a lantern with a moth, while another had

flowers growing up each side of the house.

For now, the houses are meant to be an interior decoration. Tancy wanted

something her mother could put into her home in Florida, and thought a

colorful birdhouse would be just the thing. The houses have not been tested

for use outdoors yet - Tancy uses water-based acrylic paints to adorn the

houses, and none have been covered with a shellac - but she is waiting for the

spring thaw to see how the paints stand up to exposure to sun and rain.

"The nice thing is, all four sides are always painted, so there's no limit [to

where they can be placed]," she said. The houses can be used as a table

centerpiece, placed on a shelf or on a bureau. She even showed off one house

which had a hanger affixed to the back of it, so the house could be hung from

a wall.

"I hadn't started this thinking of a business," she says, "but people started

asking me for them and it's sort of turned into one.

"And I love doing them, so what better way to start a business than by doing

something you enjoy doing?"

Right now, Tancy is on a long-term temp job at Union Carbide but if she is

able to, she'd like to take her talent and the public's interest in her

birdhouses and turn it into a full-time business.

Each house takes between eight and ten hours to complete, but Tancy sees this

time decreasing somewhat as she becomes more familiar with painting the

houses. She has a few names to contact, including the name and address for a

buyer at Smith & Hawkins and the Ethan Allen stores in Milford and Hartsdale.

"I've been drawing since I was 14, but I'm not a trained artist," Tancy says.

She took lessons when she was younger with Faith Todd of Danbury, and was

raised in a very creative home environment, but when it came time to plan an

education for her future, Tancy went to Hartwood College and then graduated

from Western Connecticut State University with an English degree. She also has

two years towards a degree in interior designing.

Growing up, Tancy's parents did not want their children watching television

much - "Only if we were sick," Tancy recalled. Instead, the Gemzas (a

Polish-Hungarian name, it is pronounced "Gyem-zaa) encouraged nearly any kind

of creativity their children showed interest in. While her sister took the

musical route - ballet dancing, or playing piano, drum, violin and drums -

Tancy was more sports-oriented, trying out barrel racing and earning a number

of trophies in go-cart racing.

Tancy attributes her knowledge of flowers and the intricacies of flower petals

to working closely to her parents. Her father, Ted Gemza, is an excellent rose

gardener, and Tancy's mom, Doris Jean Gemza, had her daughter planting annuals

in the family's garden by the time she was ten years old. It was Tancy's

mother who also instructed her in needlework, which she still does in some of

her spare time.

As of yet, Tancy has not chosen a birdhouse to keep for herself. She is having

too much fun designing for her friends and family, and also filling the orders

that have started to come in. Although she has a lot of ideas of her own and

likes each house to be an original design, Tancy says she is very open to

suggestions for custom orders.

Each house averages $45-$50 each to purchase, with larger houses having a

larger price tag. Future plans include expanding into decorating churches,

windmills and southern plantation-style homes. All of the houses are decorated

on all four sides, and Tancy signs and dates each one she does.

"It's been great getting the orders," she said last week, proudly looking over

the work she has done already. "I just didn't realize [when I started] how

hard it would be to part with each one."

For more information on Tancy's Fancy Birdhouses, call Tancy Gemza at

270-0081.