A Snowy Day and New Years Greetings

We had a nice little BLIZZARD here in New England earlier this week. The snow started here on Sunday and didn't stop until Monday night. It was no fun for us who had to shovel this wet heavy snow, but for our little ones it was heaven. Our 5 year old loved the snow and we couldn't get him inside until he started to turn blue, but our little one wanted no part of it. Being this was her first major snow storm we thought if she wasn't going to go out we decided to bring the snow in for her.


Here is our boy trying to lure her outside.


..but this seems much more to her liking.

Here's wishing everyone a joyful New Year full of friends, family and love!

Studio clean up continues... Holiday idea binders

There is something about the last week of the year that we really get hit with the organizing and cleaning bug.

We are still waiting for the quote to come back for the shelving in the studio closet, which will be a much larger project, so in the meantime we have been taking on smaller projects like organizing our holiday inspirational binders.

We love having a place where we can flip through pages of inspiring images of holiday "stuff" like interesting tree displays, ornaments, color trends and articles. Anything that inspires us to get our creative juices flowing

So we needed to come up with a system to gather all our holiday images/articles etc we acquire through the years.

As you know we love collecting holidays magazines. Our rule of thumb is, if the magazine has at least 75% of it's content dedicated to the holiday we'll keep it whole, but all the other the magazines that only have a few pages of holiday images are perfect for the binders.


A few years ago we stocked up on these Russell Hazel binders to hold our holiday inspirations. The white binder is everything Christmas and the green has Valentine's , Easter, Halloween and other holidays.


We picked up a box of clear sheet protectors (we got this box at staples 200 sheets for $10.00) and if we wanted more sections in our binder we can add dividers.


a label maker makes everything look neat and professional




Tip: for all your small pictures or swatches use a 8.5 x 11 white copy paper and tape your images to so they don't slid in the protectors. Kinda of like a scrapbook but with a whole lot less planning and layout.


Yes we are already thinking of Valentine's and a few flips through this section helps us feel the love and to get our minds thinking Valentine's. These pages have catalog images, paint swatches, ads, stickers etc.


here is a sample of our Easter section


Halloween: we have everything from treat bags to scrapbook paper any items that are 3D we store in another bin that we blogged about here.


Here are some of the Christmas pages






I hope that we have inspired you to create inspirational binders of your own!

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays from Swirly Designs

We'd like to thank all of our followers and readers of our blog. We truly appreciate all the feedback and kind words we get from our posts. It makes all the craziness worthwhile!
We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

See you in 2011!

Holiday wrap up = Studio clean up

What a whirl wind of a season it's been here at the studio. Juggling everything from our craft shows (we will blog about that soon) to fufilling our holiday ornament orders. We hope everyone who was able to order this year has received their ornaments by now. For anyone who missed out this year, one of our goals for 2011 is to start production earlier so we can have more ornaments available. Cross your fingers!

Now that the holiday season has ended here at the studio we sure could use some much needed RR ... but since we are crazy, that will just have to wait. Because these next few weeks our goal is to totally clean up and reorganize our studio....especially the studio closet (see above image). It's quite embarrassing actually to show you this picture. When we moved last Sept. we didn't have time to unpack everything so it just got shoved into the closet, and we only took out what was essential to creating our ornaments. What the closet really needs are functional shelving to handle all our materials and stuff. Granted we have only been in this house for a little over a year but still it's a major eye sore. Slowly we have been cleaning and organizing everything so eventually everything will have it's own place.


This bookshelf unit was the first thing we tackled. We really want to make this functional but also pleasing to look at, so we thought we would...


remove a few shelves and create holiday displays with the 13+ trees we have here in the studio all year round. Here is our red feather tree displaying some of our patriotic mini wind catchers.
(please excuse The Elf on the Shelf in the upper left corner...he's here for the holiday season keeping our 5 year old on his toes!)


This cool little egg tree was purchased last year and holds a few of our new and old Easter designs. We used a sheet of wrapping paper to line the back of the bookshelf to give it some color. On the pedestal is an early Christmas gift we picked up for ourselves at the SOWA Holiday Market we did a few weeks ago. It's an original Vintage by Crystal little Easter bunny figure.


This corner of the studio is our glitter/ paper puncher station. Everything is displayed so we can see it from across the room.


This section we still haven't cleaned up yet. We still have a lot of our Halloween pieces out and a lot of paper work to go through.

So that's a quick look at what we have been up to these last few days before Christmas. Our goal is to get this all done as soon as we can so we can photograph it before we have to take everything out again and start designing for Valentine's Day!!

Yes I know we are crazy!

Hope you all have a wonderfully crazy Holiday!

~Lianne & Paul

Finally...and the winner is…

A huge thanks to everyone who entered our Matthew Mead giveaway.
We're sorry it took us so long to pick a winner and announce it, but it's been just a tad busy here at the studio..wink..wink

Soooo without further ado....

The lucky winner of the autographed copy of Holiday with Matthew Mead is:
Cindy Lietz, from Polymer Clay Tutor

Cindy, please email us your shipping information so we can send you your magazine!

Thanks everyone!

Our 2010 Collection is SOLD OUT!

Hope to see everyone at our last Craft show of the season this weekend
DEC 11th & 12th at the
SOWA Holiday Market
for more information visit sowaholidaymarket.com

Christmas Collection UPDATE

Even as we write this blog post we feel like it's rubbing salt into a wound for all who have missed out on some of our holiday ornaments. Please don't hate us for posting some beauty shots below of some of the ornaments that have already sold out.

With every collection we create, it seems that the demand for our handmade ornaments is growing more and more. We truly appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts knowing that you gladly bring our little swirly designs into your homes to celebrate your holiday traditions. Being that it is only the two of us here in the studio creating and juggling everything from creating the designs, updating the website, photographing the ornaments and marketing them, and also responding to emails both the positive and the negative ones.

We love what we do and we are trying our best to please everyone, so a HUGE thanks to everyone who ordered today. This was one of the our busiest and craziest day that started with orders coming in at 2am when we first posted them. And thank you to our loyal customers who come back year after year, season after season, to see what new designs we have. And thanks for understanding if something is not available when you want them.

For anyone who might have missed out on one or more of our designs, all we can say, is email us, and we will try our hardest to help you if we can.

We are going to scramble here in the studio these next few weeks making some more ornaments so hopefully we will be able to add more to the site soon.

Have a Swirly Day!
~Lianne & Paul
Here are a few close up shots of this years collection.

Christmas is coming...

It's picture day today at the studio.

We are photographing the ornaments and getting ready to launch our new handmade holiday ornament collection this Wednesday.

We were playing with tones of blues for the background and waited for just the right light in the studio. This collection is a nice mix of fun whimsical designs like snowman, festive trees, a few juvenile designs like a cookies and letter to santa design, and a snowman riding in a buggy, as well as some traditional imagery like a gold glitter tree and a holiday house design.

We hope everyone likes our designs and make sure you to check out the designs on Dec 1st because like ever year, they are limited and go pretty fast.
~Lianne & Paul

Meeting Matthew Mead and a GIVEAWAY!

Last week I had the pleasure to attend the Matthew Mead Decorating for the Holidays presentation at Company C in Concord NH. Lianne really wanted to attend event to but had went to represen the both of us. So I apologize for the bad photos..that iss usually Lianne's forte.


So I did the hour drive to Concord NH to check out the presentation, not really knowing what to expect. The event was held at Company C, a retail store full of colorful modern home furnishing. They set up a large screen in the middle of the store, showing the cover of Holiday with Matthew Mead. I spoke to one of the sales people and they said they were expecting approx 130 people at the event. I wasn't able to get a seat but I did manage to work my way towards the front of the room to snap a few pics.


Here is Matthew Mead introducing himself to the crowd and sharing a little about his background. If you haven't met Matthew before, he is a very friendly apporoachable creative gentleman. His hour or so long presentation was full of behind the scenes stories (which I personally love to know) and photos of the process of creating and producing his new holiday magazine.


During the presentation he also invited a few people in the audience to come up and see how simple and easy a lot of the projects and desserts are to create that were featured in the book~azine.


Here is the red paper wreath along with other wreath samples that is displayed on the cover of the magazine. Matthew explained to everyone how simple it is to recreate this for your own front door.


There were two tables full of items that were featured in the magazine.


After the presentation Matthew took some questions from the crowd. I found out that Matthew is hoping to make his magazine quarterly and the next issue will most likely be Summer. We were also treated to taste some of the yummy cookie recipes that are in the magazine. I got to sample the Austrian Chocolate Ball cookie..it was yummy!


Matthew then stuck around to meet a great and sign copies of his book~azine. So, as always I was thinking of our wonderful swirly blog readers, I picked up an extra issue and had Matthew sign it (see above image) for one lucky swirly reader....


So here is all you need to do for this early Christmas Gift GIVEAWAY!!

One lucky winner will receive an autographed copy of Holiday with Matthew Mead.
Just leave a comment on our blog sharing something to do about the Holidays (an idea, tip, color, memory... anything goes).

Contest will end midnight MONDAY DECEMBER 6TH (EST) we will pick one random winner and send them this wonderful autographed book~azine just in time for Christmas.

FIVE Optional Bonus Entries - Leave each extra entry in a separate comment.
• Follow Swirly Designs on Twitter and let us know in your comment
• Like Swirly Designs on Facebook and let us know in your comment
• Follow the Swirly Blog and let us know in your comment
• Join our e-mailing list and let us know in your comment
• If you have your own Blog, spread the word about our giveaway on your Blog and let us know in your comment, with a link.

~ Good Luck!!

THIS GIVEAWAY WILL RUN THROUGH MIDNIGHT ON DECEMBER 6, 2010 (EST). WINNER WILL BE CHOSEN USING RANDOM.ORG FROM ALL VALID ENTRIES AND NOTIFIED VIA EMAIL. WINNER WILL HAVE 48 HOURS TO CONTACT US BEFORE ANOTHER WINNER IS CHOSEN.
GIVEAWAY IS OPEN TO U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY (18+).

Happy Thanksgiving

We'd like to take this time and wish all of our Swirly readers a Happy Thanksgiving!

We are looking forward to taking a break from the craziness of the studio here and enjoying the time with our family. This is why we love this holiday so much.
Family + food, it doesn't get better than that.

Gobble Gobble!
Lianne & Paul


This turkey was created by our little guy last year for Thanksgiving. Using a piece of paper and covering with color crayons he then colored all over it with a black crayon. He scratched away the black to expose the color underneath. Next he decorated it with seeds and acorns. Not bad for a four year old.

Celebrate the holidays with Matthew Mead and Swirly Designs

Nothing says holidays like Matthew Mead and we are super excited to be apart of this truly unique project that he has created. We have been an admirer of Matthew’s work for years and back in March we had a chance to meet him while he was promoting his Flea Market Style magazine. We showed Matthew some of our designs in person, and he said that our work would work great in a new holiday magazine he was producing and self-publishing all by himself (well with a very small core group of creatives). So after 8 months of sending him design samples and corresponding back and forth we now hold this wonderful book~azine our hands.


We have a beautiful full page shot of our fun mini swirly snowman wind catcher ornaments


and this mini snowman pick we created exclusively for his book~a~zine. Matthew who is the king of styling, took our ornaments and created such wonderful visual treats. Really, the whole book~azine is a visual treat. Each page is filled with inspiring images and stories that evoke the very essence of the holidays.

If you love the holidays as much as us please be sure to order a copy of this wonderful book~azine. Matthew is hoping to make this self-publishing project into a quarterly issue.
We sure hope so too. Thank you to Matthew for making our stuff shine!


**Come check back here on Monday and we will be having a Matthew Mead Giveaway to kick off the holiday season!