Are you ready for the Summer....

The nice weather is finally upon us here in New England... which means we can venture out of the studio and spend more time sketching outside in the sun ..yahoo!

Sun being the key word here...so without further adieu we are so excited to share with you the start of our new designs Summer: Sand, Sun & Swirly collection.

Once we decided summer was the theme, the wave of ideas just come flowing out.:)

We will put any and every idea on paper and then combine, edit and redraw. The color sketches above are the result of many, many, many rough sketches. And these will still go through another round of  edits once we start working them out in clay. 

COLOR is what helps keeps continuity with any collection. We are really liking the color palette of blues, oranges, yellow/greens and gray for this summer line.

These 3D figures have become a staple in our past collections and they are so much fun to create. We cannot wait to see how these turn out. 

We will keep you posted as the collection progresses. We are planning for a launch date sometime in June.  

Join our Swirly Mailing list to be notified when a collection is online and connect with us

 on facebook for more update on our work.

Color Blocking Birthday Party!

Our sweet and very silly little girl turned 4 this month. With only a week to plan we had been debating on a "theme" to use for her birthday this year. We toyed with a couple of themes -some were character based and some were not. But Chloe wasn't excited about any ideas we had. Until we mentioned... Color (Lianne prefers rainbow) anyways her eyes lit up at the idea! 

So once that was settled the clouds parted in the sky and the ideas just shined down.

Here are some fun shots of the day:

We love to go all out and decorate (crazy artists) for parties even if we were only having a small 

gathering of family members. We decked out our gallery wall with some quick rainbow art. We broke crayons and gluing them into a shadow box. We purchased some plain wood blocks (above) and painted them all various colors for the food table.

The birthday girl adding colorful candies to her cake and being silly with her brother in our large color balloon banner.

Our food table decked out with all the colors blocks. We set up 6 sections and coordinated food containers and we collected some of her favorite toys that were each color of the rainbow. The affect was really neat, and our guests really enjoyed looking at all the fun colorful treats and toys we had on display.

We had lots of fun getting matching candy ~that not only was the right shade but would also be tasty! And our chalkboard got a custom birthday message as well.

Lianne found some wonderful rainbow food inspiration on Pinterest like these colorful 

fruit kabobs and pasta salad. Yum!

And finally before the guests arrived we managed to take a few colorful family pictures...

The good...

and the silly (my personal favorite). 

 Lianne's idea was for each of us was to wear a color in the rainbow...

But our little birthday girl had her own vision and wanted to wear EVERY color:)

Have a colorful day!!

Swirly Bunnies for you!

Well, here we are a week before Easter and I think we may be a little crazy. Since Easter is soooo early this year, we just couldn't get stuff together to do a full ornament collection. Guilt set in, and over the weekend we scrambled to put together some Swirly bunny cupcake ornaments that we have been working on the last few days.

It is a first come, first serve basis! So make your selections quickly and email us your name and shipping address to sales@swirlydesigns.com. We'll let you know if you got them.

We'll send PayPal invoices via email unless you specify that you'd rather pay by check. Email us if you have questions.

The details:
Small bunny is $22 and the large one is $26; shipping will be $5.

The fine print: Because it's the week before Easter, we can't guarantee you'll receive them before Sunday, but we'll try our hardest!

These are the TWO LARGE BUNNIES

These are the TWO LARGE BUNNIES  $26 each
SDE~001 & SDE~002

Are small bunnies are all sold out. Thank you!

Your bunny will be delivered wrapped like a festive carrot.

Small Orange Bunny  $22 each

We have a Swirly Surprise for you....

Seasonal How-to: Bunny Egg Treat Box

The two of us here at Swirly Designs are so happy to be working again this year with Polyform Products. Together we can share with you some wonderful seasonal how-to projects. Our first

project this year is one of our personal favorites. You can create this really sweet and practical

Bunny Egg Treat Box. Find the how-to here. You can fill it with special treats for your kids basket, add it to your holiday centerpiece or even make it the golden prize for your annual egg hunt.   

The clay used in this project is called Model Air, air dry clay from Polyform. If you haven't tried it, we would really recommend experimenting with it. It's perfect for this type of project because you don't have to cook your piece and worry about the papier mache egg in your oven. But it is a lot more messier than we are used to working with since we mostly have worked with a cleaner clay like Premo for our own designs. That did take a little time getting use to. We kept a spray bottle and roll of paper towels with in hands reach so we could keep our hands clean.... but  you know it's good to get messy especially when you're in your creative groove.

Our project shows how to make feet for your bunny egg, but we also created a few without feet. On those we just decoupaged the bottom half of the egg with colored tissue paper, paint mini flowers and added a dusting of glitter. These work great to compliment your footed bunny. They also work if you plan on keeping them in a basket because they tend to be a little top heavy and roll over without the feet support. 

 

Let your creativity go crazy and paint your bunny to fit your own holiday decor. 

These are all the versions of the bunny egg we created for this how-to project. Once we made one they just started muiltiplying. :-)

The bigger the papier mache egg you choose to use in this project the more treats they can hold.

If you like this project and want to keep seeing Swirly Designs create more, be sure to visit Polyform Products facebook page and share your thoughts. You can also visit the Swirly Designs facebook page and share your feedback and share pictures of your finished Bunny Egg Treat Box.

Have a fun and Swirly Easter!

xo Lianne & Paul 

This project is for personal, non-commercial use ONLY.

How~to: St. Patty's Day Shamrock Picks

Swirly Designs is sharing a little Luck O' the Irish with you today! Join us and craft up this simple Shamrock Pick to fancy up your dessert table this Saint Patrick's Day.  

It's easy! Let's get started:

Materials: 

• Green card stock (solid or you can use a print)

• 1/16" hole punch

• heart shape punch

• mini circle brads

• bent nose jewelry pliers

• toothpicks

• green food coloring

• small bowl 

  

Step 1.

Following the direction on the food coloring box, mix the shade of green that will complement your green paper. Add in your toothpicks and let them sit approx 15 -20 minutes. The longer they sit in the solution the darker your toothpicks will be. 

Step 2.

Remove toothpicks from the dye and let them dry completely.

Step 3.

Take some green card stock and a heart shape punch and punch out three hearts. (You will need three hearts to make one shamrock so for every one you are planning to make times by 3)

Step 4.

Stack the three heart shapes together and with a 1/16" hole punch, punch a hole about an 1/8" up from the bottom of the heart shape.

Step 5.

Insert a mini circle brad through the 1/8" hole in all three heart cut outs.

Step 6.

Open the brad ends and lay your dried tooth pick in the middle, and then close the brad.

Step 7.

Use your bent nose jewelry pliers to secure the brad tighter to your toothpick. Then spread apart your hearts to create your shamrock.

Once you get one done you can really crank these out fast. Use on your cupcakes, Irish soda bread or you can write your guests name on each for place cards.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

~Lianne & Paul

This project is for personal, non-commercial use ONLY.

DIY Easter Egg Garland

Here is a simple project to dress up your staircase, mantel or door way just in time for Easter. 

All you need is a some yarn, a few bags of plastic eggs, a couple of thumb tacks and scissors.  

First cut the yarn to fit the length of your staircase, adding a few inches to make it "swag".

Then it's time to add the eggs. We really liked these transparent eggs because it allows the eggs to shine in the sunlight.
Depending how much space you want between your eggs will determine how many you will need. Open an egg, lay the yarn in the center of the egg and then snap it close. It's as  simple as that!

We decided to keep this garland simple but you can embellish yours even more by adding more eggs, put something in them, string beads or glue paper flowers between the eggs. Be creative. 

~Happy Egg~ster