Breath of the Dragon ~ Pyrography by Sunfire

About Sunfire

My name is Connie, but I prefer to go by Sunfire (a high school nickname that stuck). I'm a veteran of the US Navy, having served 5 great years working with computers. Turns out being military wasn't in my heart, so here I am making a go of this 'real world'.

I currently live in Wenatchee, WA, in a home of our own with my husband, my high school sweetheart. Neither of us drive, but this is a very walkable town with good mass transit. Between working from home as a Web Developer and spending time in our yard/garden with my husband, I also enjoy baking, video games, and crafting. Most of my pyrography was created between 2008 and 2012, while I was working on my Bachelor's Degree.

In 2010, I discovered a little something called Turn Peace Around. It was a movement geared toward flipping the peace sign around so that the 'arms' pointed upward. The idea is that this is a more positive symbol for peace. I fell in love with this idea, and in 2011 I started marketing the idea with crafts. You may even see some of them here in the near future.

I have begun to embrace volunteering more, especially related to Veterans. I am very involved with my local VFW Post, I manage the website for American Heroes Network, and I run a project called NCW Veterans Info.

About Breath of the Dragon

Breath of the Dragon (.com) has been Sunfire's home on the Web since 2003. The original intention was to sell candles and incense, but at the time, I was not ready to be a retail business owner. Instead, the website was used as a personal platform for sharing my adventures while travelling in the Navy. That is, until I discovered blogging platforms (Livejournal, etc). Those blogging sites, however, still let me dabble in HTML and web design. These first explorations with coding led me to a degree in Web Development, which I started pursuing after leaving the Navy in 2006.

Without a stable job after the Navy, I turned back to my original idea, selling products from my website. I signed up with a couple of drop-ship suppliers, and created an online shop from scratch, complete with PayPal buttons. This version of Breath of the Dragon lasted almost 2 years, before I realised I am a terrible sales person when I am selling something I don't have complete faith in. Surrounded by my mom's creativity and passion, I got back into an old hobby - wood burning. Creating and selling my handmade crafts consumed me, and my web development fell to the back burner.

To sell my handmade goods, I started a shop on Etsy, but moved to Zibbet about 2 years after that. Breath of the Dragon became the name of my business, and I directed the URL to my selling site. But I missed the coding, the tweaking of the smallest things to achieve perfection.

Upon completion of my degree in June 2014, I created Sunfire Web Solutions for the web development side of me, while keeping Breath of the Dragon focused on my pyrography and craft explorations. My Web Development grew into independent contractor/freelance work as well as part of Hitsaru, LLC (founded with my husband) and until the July 2021 closure of Zibbet, all of the items I had and have for sale were listed in my Zibbet shop.

Having a lifetime account with Zibbet allowed me to leave my crated items visibile to the world while I focused on web development work. With Zibbet sold and my freelancing career stabilizing, I needed a place to feature (and eventually once again sell) my handcrafted items and I still own this domain. So why not stretch my skills and build something for myself? Which brings us to what you see today.