Spencer already knew Abby had a predilection for punishment when he asked her what made her tick that day in the Barnes & Noble customer service kiosk. There were no books to shelve, no customers to help. It was just two twenty-something booksellers and the electricity between them. It was time. He wanted to hear her say it.
She wiggled her feet; she played with her hair. She blushed. He observed her discomfort with delight. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. Finally: “I like spanking,” she whispered.
He grinned. “I know,” he whispered back. “I like spanking too.”
A Wedding Present
Hi folks, Abby here. We’re just about to launch LRSToys.com, a place we hope will become your new home for spanking toys and resources on the web. Spencer has made and sold thousands of wooden paddles on our Etsy shop, Little Red Spanking. We’ve added leather straps to our offerings, with new leather straps and paddles in development. The new website will have a rewards program, a newsletter, and of course, a blog.
But did you know that we first introduced ourselves to the world as spankos all the way back in 2007 on a blog? We might even have known you back then!
We were just married, four years after our historic incident at the Barnes & Noble customer service desk. We began our honeymoon at Disneyland, then drove up the California and Oregon coasts, stopping in every antique store we could find, hunting for objects we could turn into spanking implements on our way back to Portland.
In those days, blogs were still something new. We were wholeheartedly shocked and elated when we discovered an entire community of blogs dedicated to spanking. Upon our return from the honeymoon, I decided to start a blog of my own as a wedding gift to Spencer. I wanted to tell our story, write erotica, talk about my personal feelings about the kink, and, with any luck, make friends with like-minded folks. Our original LRS, The Little Red Schoolhouse spanking blog, was born.
By 2008, we were making our own spanking movies. We sold our Naughty Abby movies on Clips4Sale, well before the days of OnlyFans. I took my favorite blog posts and published an e-book. We talked about building a spanking empire, but as many of us know, life is what happens while you’re thinking about building a spanking empire. It would be over a decade before LRS would find new life as Little Red Spanking.
Stills from a 2008 Naughty Abby film
Antiques & Pervertables
We stopped making movies and writing blog posts after a while, but we certainly did not lose our passion for “this thing we do,” the name given to spanking by our early blogger friends.
Our careers blossomed in their own directions. Spencer flourished in musical instrument sales - if you bought a high end guitar, amp, or pedal in Portland, Oregon in the early 2000’s, good chance you bought it from him. Meanwhile, I found my footing in accounting, which was funny because as my blog from back then will tell you, I have never liked being told to count during a spanking!
We spent our weekends on antiquing adventures, scouring thrift stores and upscale vintage boutiques for “pervertables,” those objects that are not meant for spanking but can easily be repurposed by inspired individuals.
Our first pervertables were purchased shortly after the customer service desk incident. We bought a hairbrush from Target - the inspiration for our Abby’s Hairbrush and Spencer’s Hairbrush paddles. We bought garden rattan from Home Depot and a soft, well-worn leather belt from the Salvation Army. Later, a collection of items came from the farm supply store - riding crops, leather riding bats, even harnesses could all be repurposed for use upon an upturned bottom.
After we were married, we were able to indulge in fancier pervertables - antique leather strops became straps, slim hardwood walking sticks became canes, a variety of vintage wooden cooking utensils became our paddle collection. An antique clothing brush became the inspiration for our Victorian paddle. We owned multiple school desks. Their wrought iron bases and heavy wood frames made for sturdy spanking benches with an absolute absence of comfort. They were sexy, fun, and completely unusable as furniture except for during spanking scenarios.
Of course, we purchased implements made for spanking as well, including higher end toys, but there was a maker’s spark in Spencer well before he cut his first board of wood. We loved being able to buy and experiment, but we knew our toy collection would not be complete until it included toys he had made for us. We just didn’t know how to get started. We were living our lives and we already had plenty of toys. It was fine.
LRS Toys Victorian Birch paddle pictured with our antique clothes brush
Second Chances
By 2014, those flourishing careers had stagnated - neither of us was happy. Spencer’s family had relocated to Phoenix from Southern California for a fresh start, and we decided to join them. We left our ridiculously heavy school desk spanking benches in the rainy Northwest and headed for the desert.
We tried to carry on with our careers, but fate had other plans. Spencer’s body organized a mutiny, resulting in hospitalization, a coma, and an unexpected auto-immune diagnosis to work through once he woke up. Meanwhile, my brain did its best to convince me that I had nothing left to offer anyone, least of all Spencer, least of all the spanking world, least of all the empire we had once wanted so badly to build together.
We both fought back. It often felt like we were clawing our way out of our graves, at times side by side, at times alone but looking upwards towards the other person who was now reaching back with a helping hand. We climbed. Together and alone, we climbed. For years, we climbed.
Do you know what you see when you finally reach the top of that terrifying climb? Everything. Everything you ever wanted in the world is suddenly possible. All you have to do is just don’t climb back down. Keep going forward. Find your footing. Find your path. Find a new path. Find as many paths as you need. Just don’t climb back down.
$20 Worth of Wood and Two Boxes of Dirty Books
We found the path meant for us when Spencer found an OfferUp listing for $20 worth of wood. A local doormaker had a large pile of cast-off wood cuts and was looking for someone to take it away. For $20, you could load your vehicle with as much wood as would fit.
They were not expecting a Toyota sedan to pull up, but they took our $20 and helped us pack that little car with two-to-three foot boards of knotty alder, a lightweight domestic wood that, while not perfect for spanking paddles, was ideal for someone just learning the art of woodworking.
Spencer had no experience with wood. We found second-hand tools and saws. We built a workshop in the garage. Piece by piece, Spencer began to make paddles.
Meanwhile, I’d found a job that felt like it was exactly where I needed to be, but I was full-time vanilla. Then Spencer found another local on OfferUp - this time it was someone selling two large boxes of vintage smut.
Spencer and I are both long-time collectors of spanking erotica - I’ll tell you about our first date driving around Los Angeles visiting adult bookstores in a future post. However, there wasn’t much spanking smut in those boxes. It was the perfect opportunity to open a vintage erotic bookshop online!
We opened The Naughty Abbey on Etsy, which later became Litte Red Bookshop once we started adding vintage sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and non-fiction to our listings, as well as a more cultivated erotica section with spanking fiction. I kept the vanilla job, but at long last - we had our own bookshop. Now every day we could handle customer service and talk about spanking, just like we did in the beginning.
One of Spencer's very first paddles, pictured with Abby's bum
The Little Red Spanking Years
In the fall of 2019, about a year after opening the bookshop, we began to let the online spanking community know that Spencer was making paddles. We ran occasional Twitter giveaways that we called Free Paddle Friday and we listed a few of the paddles Spencer had made on the bookshop.
Our hearts get happy even now when we think back to those days and the realization that people wanted our paddles! Our friends wanted our paddles, but so did strangers from all over the world.
In February of 2020, we opened our Etsy paddle shop. I had often referred to my blog, The Little Red Schoolhouse, as TLRS. It was an easy transition to LRS - Little Red Spanking. We upgraded the workshop with new tools and Spencer became the spanking toy maker he was meant to be.
The four years since have been the best of our lives. Our home is filled with erotica and the spanking toys we always wanted - toys made with care, quality materials, and so much love.
But Spencer never lets himself get comfortable. The paddles he crafts now are lightyears ahead of the first Little Red Spanking implements. Even though fans have referred to his implements as “the best” and “the gold standard” in paddles, he is always striving to be better. He constantly challenges himself with new woods, new shapes, new techniques, and even new materials - our leather Spencer’s Spanking Strap introduced in 2023 has been a hit on Etsy and we’ll be offering new leather products on LRS Toys this summer.
Welcome to LRS Toys
But, you may ask - if Little Red Spanking on Etsy is as successful as all that, why build a new website?
Well, the vanilla job that had made me happy came to an end in 2023, the entire company having succumbed to the post-COVID economy. I took another position but it was the wrong fit with the wrong people. What’s worse, I was giving all my energy to a company that didn’t appreciate me while Spencer was handling Little Red Spanking plus trying to source inventory for the bookshop, all while helping me keep my sanity. Enough was enough!
Spencer and I began to talk about everything we could do with our own website. We could have more control over our listings. We could have a newsletter, because Etsy doesn’t like its shop owners to obtain customer emails. We could have a rewards program for our repeat customers. We could offer a referral program and allow those folks who really love our toys to become ambassadors. We could have a blog right on our own website. We could build a community!
And so it was that in March, I set myself free from all that “vanilla job” nonsense, I finally stood next to Spencer as his full-time partner in LRS.
We’ve spent the last twenty years exploring our passion for spanking together while sharing experiences with the worldwide spanking community. We’ve struggled with our own humanity and the ups and downs of a fetish that doesn’t always fit what our minds or bodies can handle in the moment. We’ve changed, we’ve grown, we’ve become the Abby and Spencer we’ve always wanted to be.
But we’re not alone. What started as two young people flirting in retail became something so much bigger than ourselves. That’s because of you.
You are part of this journey. Whether you’re a newcomer to “this thing we do,” a spanking pro, or anyone in between, we’ve learned so much from all of you over the years. The stories you tell and the questions you ask enable us to become better people, better paddle makers, and better representatives of our community and kink. Your voice matters. Your kink matters. You matter.
And that’s why we built a new website. Welcome home. We wouldn’t be LRS Toys without you.
Spencer & Abby at the Arizona Renaissance Festival
Abby
Abby is one of the founding members of LRS Toys along with paddle maker Spencer. Married for seventeen years, Abby and Spencer love sharing their passion for consensual adult spanking with the world.