This fantastic designer makes many of our chandeliers, lamps, drawer knobs, curtain and bed finials and wall racks. She can make just about any design you can think of. Contact us for a custom quote: customerservice@crayoncastles.com

BIO

TERESA THOMPSON
by Lisa Martin

Home schooling mom’s passion—and proficiency with a paintbrush—

evolve into a thriving upscale lighting and decorative accessory business

While necessity may be the mother of invention, few of us would consider desperation an effective creative catalyst. Yet that was precisely the case with Teresa Thompson, a forty-something Missouri native and longtime resident of Dallas. In 2000, this home schooling mother-of-two found herself in the midst of a family crisis. Felled by a sudden (and significant) illness, her husband, Bill, abruptly ceased being the breadwinner.

“Things were getting pretty desperate,” Teresa recalls. “I knew I had to do something.”

Little could she have imagined that the “something” —a high-end lighting and decorative accessories manufacturing business that she aptly named Just Too Cute—would grow 3000%

in the next two years! Today, retailers around the country carry her heirloom-quality pieces.

But it was during those first few entrepreneurial months that she realized to what extent savvy shopkeepers embrace quality products of innovative design.

Teresa Thompson chose to specialize in ceramics because it was an art form she loved and in which she excelled. From there, her imagination proved an able guide. After arming herself with several sample lamps, this self-taught artist toted her wares to chichi children’s and home furnishing’s boutiques throughout North Texas. The response was no less than astonishing.

“I was overwhelmed at how excited these retailers were about what I was trying to do,” Teresa notes, still relishing that early encouragement. In some instances, she incorporated the suggestions of storeowners into her products. Even today, she tinkers with her core collection, continually expanding her line with new looks that translate the latest trends.

Among her bestsellers are the Aladdin lamp, upholstered tuffets with froggie feet as well as classic candlestick lamps. Recent introductions include an adorable floor lamp fashioned from ceramic teapots (a design she spent four months perfecting!), Ballerina Bunny lighting fixtures and the superb Cinderella’s Slipper chandelier.

Along the way, Teresa realized she’d become a bona fide trend-tracker, learning how to gauge what customers truly want for their homes, most especially for their daughter’s rooms.

“People always think that trends start with interior designers but that’s not necessarily how it is,” she explains. “I’m always asking shop owners about what their customers are looking for but can’t find. Then I’ll interpret what they want in order to fill that niche.”

What’s hot right now are whimsical animal motifs in vibrant pastels.

“Bunnies are really strong and so are frogs,” she says. “And pastels are always wonderful. They’re so perfect in any little girl’s room and they just seem to speak to me.”

The superior quality of construction as well as the fine finishes insures that the owner—however young—will prize a Just Too Cute product for decades.

Teresa is quick to give much of the credit for her company’s success to her employees, a dozen full- and part-timers, many of whom were once children she helped home school alongside her own two sons.

“Our team is so dedicated to making everything top-notch,” she says. “They appreciate the demands of the high-end market and push themselves to constantly make everything better and better.”

And while business continues to flourish, Teresa Thompson is hardly resting on past successes. Rather, she’s continually experimenting with new products, new looks and new materials in order

to keep creating the most innovative, delightful lighting and decorative accessories in today’s upscale children’s market.
“We will keep growing but never at the expense of our quality or integrity,” she says. “At the same time, when I look back at where we started—when it was just me and I was putting together lamps in my garage at all hours of the night—I’m overwhelmed at how far we’ve come.”

This is the lamp she designed for our "Cheerleader Room" for Extreme Makeover Home Edition Alaska Project