Happy Hands Sensory Bar

Founder's Story

Happy Hands Sensory Bar began with our family and a simple belief: everyone deserves a place where they can create, play, and belong.

My wife Tammy and I watched our grandchildren navigate sensory needs, anxiety, and social challenges, but we also saw what happened when they discovered sensory play. Slime, fidgets, and hands-on activities brought comfort, encouraged focus and confidence, and gave them another way to connect with the world around them.

As they grew, one thought stayed with us: we wished there had been a place designed for this kind of experience.

So we decided to create it.

Happy Hands is the place we wish had existed for our family: colorful, welcoming, hands-on, and made for children and adults alike. We're building it from the ground up as a small family business where people can explore sensory play, have fun, be themselves, and belong.

Our story started with our family. Happy Hands is being built for everyone.

Business Description

Happy Hands Sensory Bar is a family-owned sensory play business bringing an interactive slime and sensory experience to the Tri-Cities region of Northeast Tennessee. We are creating a colorful, welcoming destination where children, teens, adults, and families can explore sensory play, get creative, shop, and simply have fun. At the heart of Happy Hands is **Gooey’s Slime Lab**, our interactive slime bar where customers will be able to personalize their own slime creations by choosing textures, colors, scents, charms, and other fun add-ins.

We create many of our sensory products ourselves in small batches, including multiple slime textures, kinetic sand, cloud dough, sensory-bin fillers, worry stones, and other hands-on creations. Happy Hands will also offer a carefully selected assortment of fidget toys, squishies, sensory toys, and creative play products. In addition to our retail experience, our plans include birthday parties, festivals and vendor events, school and community activities, and other opportunities to bring sensory play beyond our physical location.

Happy Hands was created with inclusion at its heart. While sensory play can support focus, creativity, fine-motor development, emotional regulation, and connection, it doesn’t have to serve a special purpose to be worthwhile. Sometimes squishing slime, digging through kinetic sand, or discovering the perfect fidget is simply **fun**.

Our goal is to grow Happy Hands Sensory Bar into a lasting community destination where people of different ages, abilities, and sensory preferences feel comfortable exploring and creating together. We believe play is for everyone, and we’re building Happy Hands around three simple ideas: **Create. Play. Belong.**