About Heartwood Art and MaAnna Stephenson
Hey y’all!
My name is MaAnna, pronounced May Anna, like JoAnna. It’s a Southern thing.
I love working with wood!!
I started my wood journey with carvings, which you can see in the Gallery. They have been featured in Woodcarving Illustrated and Scrollsaw Woodworking and Crafts.
These days you’ll find me in Middle TN, just north of Nashville, in my oversized garage that I partially converted into a woodshop (it’s taking over more space every year, of course).
Naturally, I had to build all kinds of things for the shop, like workbenches and more. See my Woodshop Builds here.
That got me hooked on making things for the house, storage for the garage, stuff for my dog, and more!!!
Visit the Woodworking Builds and Tips page to see all of my build plans, tool tutorials, and tips for making your woodworking easy and fun.
Let’s Connect
What Else I’m Into
I love to learn and I live to create!!!
I come from a musical family and I’ve been playing and writing music since I could sit in someone’s lap. In college I was formally educated in the business of music and acoustics. I’m a multi-instrumentalist (9 and counting) and a published composer with international airplay in 14 countries.
Even so, I realized that music wouldn’t pay all the bills, so I switched to electronic engineering and enjoyed a 30+ year career in that field while still pursuing my creative endeavors.
I’m the author of The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, which was featured in Publishers Weekly.
While I was on lecture tour with the book, my carvings got noticed by a writer for Fox Chapel Publishing, and they were featured in several magazines, including Woodcarving Illustrated and Scrollsaw Woodworking and Crafts. They even asked me to write a tutorial for them!!
To share my creative projects with friends and family who were scattered all of the country, I started building websites back in the day when you needed a coder to have a site. I was hooked! And every organization I volunteered with wanted websites, as did all of their board members. I made a nice side living with that for several years.
Finally, I quit my day job to run BlogAid where I help nice folks make money online with sites that get found, read, and acted upon. I also teach designers to become full webmasters. It sponsors this site and my woodworking and music hobbies.