Swirly Easter Collection update

It's hard to think that just around the corner is spring when it's been so cold and rainy this past week here in New England. Yuck Yuck Yuck!

Looking at the calendar today and February is pretty much history and we are heading into March fast.

With Easter being so early this year (April 4th) and with so much going on in the studio right now we are coming down to the wire. We need to make quick decision on whether we do an Easter collection this year or just do a spring collection in May.

We have one vote for skipping Easter this year and focusing on an all new Spring line and one vote for turning the studio upside trying to get his favorite Holiday represented this year. What to do? What to do?

Alas, it is just getting too late for us to get a collection up for Easter.

So for now we thought we would post a few of our favorite Easter designs from our last years collection that are online now. Since we have quite a few new followers who joined our mailing list this past Christmas, this could be a great opportunity for you to pick up a few of our favorite Easter treats for your baskets.

So we hope to have our spring collection launched by the end of April/May. Stay tuned to this blog, we may have an Easter giveaway soon!

Happy Valentine's Day

Sending out the LOVE

Just made the final trip to the post office today to make sure you get all those lovely Valentine's ornaments delivered to everyone who ordered this year. The studio now needs to be cleared of all Valentine's so we can get ready for designing our Spring collection. But even though Valentine's might be gone soon, remember you can always order our love designs for your love any time of the year!


This order was for 11 of our ornaments. This person orders a few from every season.

Don't you just love the color bands on the white gift boxes?

~ Hope you have a Happy Valentine's Day

Lots of Love with a little Luck!

It's February 1st and our Valentine's collection is finally up. YAY! The time frame for us to pull together a Valentine's collection is VERY short! After wrapping up months of work we put into doing a Christmas line we make such a quick switch and jump right into another collection. It is fun though to focus on this collection of ornaments. Our Valentine's designs have tones of reds & pinks and whimsical hearts with embellishments and glitter. Over the years we have had many requests about creating ornaments for some of the other holidays, so this year we have included a few St Patrick's Day designs. Here are some of this years designs:





































Have a LOVELY Valentine's day!
~Lianne & Paul

Getting back in the Swirl of things

We have finally recovered (some what) from the crazy Christmas season and now we are planning ahead for the new year. This year we want to get a head start and be better organized for all the upcoming Holidays that are quickly approaching We have got a bunch of new desk and wall clendars, dry erase boards & stacks of TO DO pads all around the studio. Are you all aware that Easter is April 4th this year... yikes!

But today here in the studio it's all about love. We have been busy sketching new ideas for our Valentine collection...we know...we're behind! I guess the organization resolution isn't working out so great! Stay tune for more updates on when the collection will be launched.

** To get an email reminder of when our new collections are available online join our mailing list

Looking back and Planning ahead

Just spent the morning looking for a new 2010 desk planner at the bookstore. How quickly the dates are already filling up. We thought we would do a quick post about this past year and what we hope to accomplished in the coming new year.

~ Lots of changes happened to us personally this year. We had a second baby in April and we moved into a new house in the fall (after searching all summer long) right before our busy holiday season. Who planned that?

~ We have found over the years Halloween is becoming a very popular holiday in terms of decor. This makes our Christmas collection planning trickier with scheduling and production of the 2 holidays so close together!

~ Craft shows: knowing we were having a second baby we really had to figure out how many craft shows we could handle. As much as we really enjoy them, they are very tiresome to do. So we thought this year we would try less shows and do more print advertising. The shows we did do were very successful for us but the print ads, not so much. We are still wondering if the cost of them were they really worth it (If you ask Lianne, she was against the print ads from the get go). I was more willing to try because we had such great success with the ads we did in Mary Engelbriet Home Companion Magazine. We still are getting emails from people who are going through their old issues. Which leads us to another fun little project we are doing for the ME Studio Workshop happening in the spring of 2010. We are contributing an ornament to their workshop goody bag. To learn more about the ME Studio workshop go here.

~ This year we also jumped into the crazy world of social networking. Swirly Designs is on Twitter (are you following us?) and you we have a fan book page of us on facebook.

~Change: Not only personally but we deal with constant change when it comes to our favorite tools and materials. It's no fun realizing once you have something you like they go ahead and change it or get rid of it. The paper we use for our ornament tags is no longer available, the ribbon we love for our ornaments has changed and we have been searching for months for a replacement. Certain paint colors and scalloped scissors are gone. It keeps us on our toes that's for sure. Makes us think twice now every time we come across a tool or material we think we could use... we end up buying way more then we need because of fear we will never find it again.

In 2010 we are hoping to get our stuff together. Our focus is on organizing the studio and really focusing on getting some PR for the company. We are scheduled to do a new Valentine, Spring, Halloween & Christmas collection again for 2010 and hopefully start earlier (of course we are already behind on Valentines...Yikes!). We are working on a new line for kids and will continue adding more mini ornaments for the other holidays, along with some fun how-to projects.

Only time will tell what is in store for us as we are approach our 10th anniversary of Swirly Designs.

Thanks to you all and a wishing you all a Swirly 2010!
~ Lianne & Paul

Merry Christmas

As another holiday season comes to a close, we'd like to take this time to say thank you all for your wonderful support of Swirly Designs over the years.

Over the last few years our ornaments have really started taking off. They've been selling out within hours after a collection is launched online and we thank you all for that...even though we do get quite a few disappointed emails about being sold out so quickly. All we can say to that is that we are working hard and hopefully next year we will have plenty for everyone! Without all you we really wouldn't be able to do what we truly love doing. We are honored to be part of your holiday tradition.

As we approach the new year we hope lots of new Swirly good things.
Happy Holidays to you and yours!
~ Lianne & Paul