Packing up the Goodies

Last week we finally wrapped up a pretty large project. We blogged about it a few weeks back, regarding Mary Engelbreit workshop and how we offered to contribute to the goodie bag. We thought we would share some pictures of us packing up the 200+ ornaments.

We really wanted to included a nice mix of all our holiday collections.


Once the ornaments were finished (varnishes, ribbon, tagged etc) we placed each ornament in a glassine envelope to protect them.


We really wanted to include some sort of brochure in each box to help explain who we are and what we do. Lianne, the pro designer, whipped up this little beauty in an evening. She was able to get 4 up on an 11 x 17 page and print them out. It's a really inexpensive way to have something without spending a fortune.



taaa..da!
They are all finished, bubble wrapped, boxed with a color vellum wrap and sealed with a sticker. The color color wraps are color coded for the holidays.
























They are shipped and hopefully will be enjoyed by the many attendees at the workshop.

There might be still some spaces left, so check out theMEHC workshop website.

Since we are talking Mary Engelbreit have you seen her blog ? She also just did a wonderful interview (which I believe you can still download for FREE) with a very talented and interesting licensing artist named Tara Reed of www.artlicensinginfo.com.
Two fun things worth checking out:)

Update Matthew Mead Holiday magazine

We mention a few weeks ago that Matthew Mead will be coming out with a new Holiday magazine in 2010.
Well, we have an update and a link to the new website and how you can have an opportunity to be mention in the magazine:
Head over to Holiday with Matthew Mead to find out how you can win the opportunity to have your blog or online shop mentioned in the magazine. Holiday with Matthew Mead is a "book-azine" celebrating and offering inspiration for the Christmas holiday season. To be released in October 2010, Holiday is offered via online orders only - in limited quantities - and will not be sold on newsstands. But, by simply following the BUY HOLIDAY MAGAZINE link below their banner, you can reserve your own copy of this beautiful magazine, with guaranteed delivery of the magazine straight to your mailbox! Holiday with Matthew Mead is 144 pages of holiday inspiration with well-known and admired designers, bloggers and top-notch features, printed on beautiful paper and not drowning in ads!
Now, head on over for your chance to win!
~ Tell Matthew Swirly Designs sent you.

And the winner is...

Congratulations to... Artfulife
You are the winner of our darling Swirly sunny bunny ornament!
Contact us with your mailing information so we can have this shipped to you asap.

Thanks to everyone who entered our last minute Easter giveaway!
Have a Hoppy Day



*The winner was chosen via random.org number generator.*

A Swirly Easter Giveaway

Spring is here!...well actually we had snow here today in Boston.. but that's another post. Snow or not, Easter is right around the corner (April 4th) and because we are still feeling bad that we weren't able to create a new Easter collection this season (we will have a spring collection coming out in May though) we thought we'd do a Giveaway instead. YAY!


We will pick ONE winner to receive our very popular Swirly White Bunny holding a flower sitting atop a field of yellow, finished with a touch of glitter.
Just in time to celebrate Easter or to welcome Spring. Perfect to tie to someone's Easter basket or give as a nice hostess gift for the holiday.



Here is how you can enter to win this Swirly Bunny ornament:
Just leave a comment on this post and/or follow our blog(via Google friend). If you do both you will have an extra entry for the giveaway.

A winner will be chosen using Random.org on Sunday, March 28, 2010 and will be notified by email. The winner will have 24 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen.

Don't let this little cutie hop away! Enter today!

Making new Swirly gift tags

We are busy creating away this weekend finishing up the ornaments for the goodie bags for the Mary Engelbreit workshop. We are crazily adding ribbon and fraying all the ornaments, getting ready to ship out on Monday (hopefully!).

Also, we got our new business cards in the mail this week. We are happy with the results (of course the paper weight could have been a tad heavier). These will be included in the gift boxes along with a brochure that is on the to-do list for this weekend as well.

Friday night we decided we should update our gift tags, adding a little graphic instead of the swirly above the "i" to represent the many holiday designs we create.

A Butterfly graphic we felt would cover all of our Spring & Easter collections

Leaves would be for all our Fall and Thanksgiving ornaments

Shamrock for St.Patrick's Day

Valentine's and possibly for baby girl too (we are still working on baby)

Christmas/winter ornament

and our Halloween ornaments.


We love to hear your comments and feedback from our posts. We really try to post as often as we can giving you a peek inside what we are creating here at the studio. If there are any questions you have for us, please feel free to leave a comment or email us here. Enjoy the weekend!

Mini Swirly Bunnies on Martha website

How very eggciting for us!
Last year we entered Martha's Easter Creation photo contest. Being huge Easter fans we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to submit a how-to project to her readers. So we sent in our mini swirly bunny how-to project. Swirly Designs was one of the 10 winners to the contest and we won a really cool portable harddrive.

Today we got and an email from a friend telling us that our Swirly bunnies are on the Martha Stewart website under the Your Creations section here.

All of you crafty and creative readers of our blog, go to Martha site and enter your new 2010 Easter creations and maybe you will be this years winner.

Have A Swirly St. Patty's Day

We want to wish all you Irish folks and Irish at heart a wonderful St. Patty's Day! This weekend we will be celebrating at my folks house with a yummy corned beef and cabbage dinner – even Lianne, who is Italian, loves this traditional meal and enjoys being Irish
for a day :-) ~Lianne & Paul

NEW Matthew Mead Holiday magazine

Hope you all had a wonderful week. The weather is finally starting to warm up here in New England and it's about time!
And bonus, we get to change the clocks ahead this weekend!

Last Friday I saw a tweet on my twitter page (why does that sound wrong?) about Matthew Mead doing a signing at an Antique Shop in Goffstown, NH for his brand NEW magazine (right) Flea Market Style .

We have been fans of Matthew's work since we came across his 2006 Holiday with Matthew Mead magazine (pictured below). We just love it! Have you seen Matthew's work?


Over the years, he has released a lot of books: an Easter Egg book and a couple of Halloween Magazines, and the list goes on.

We feel like we share the same design sensibilities. He creates such wonderful whimiscal projects for the holidays, we love to see what he has up his sleeve every year.

We always thought our ornaments and his great style sense would be a perfect match. Since NH is fairly close to us, this was the perfect chance to at last meet Matthew, and say hi. So I headed up there on Saturday and met with Matthew and his lovely wife Jenny. We had a wonderful chat. They are a very nice couple. He signed all my Holiday books/magazine and informed me that he is working on a New Holiday Magazine that will be coming out this year! Yahoo!!! There will be a new website launching soon in the next month or so. Follow our blog so you can be informed about this new Holiday magazine.We can't say too much just yet but you might find something Swirly in the upcoming issue :)

Creating our new Swirly business cards

This weekend we finally got around to designing our new business cards. YAY!

We have been in our new studio since September and we are really trying to check off our list of to do items but it has been slow going.

Our design continues the use of art on both sides like we have done in the past. We love how it works for us and most people are surprised by the design. We picked 2 new pictures to feature on both sides.

We printed them at a site called www.4colorprint.com. This company prints great quality cards with a silk matte finish and this time around we decided to try the rounded corners. We're very excited and can't wait to get them.

Getting little projects like this done and being able to cross these off our to do list and move on is extremely satisifying.

May this be your inspiration to get things done on your to do list...go on, get to it!!

lianne & paul

Mary Engelbreit Workshop is coming...

Spring has finally sprung! If your a fan of Mary Engelbreit and her widely missed magazine Home Companion, you've probably heard by now that coming this Spring she is having her first ME Home Companion workshop event! This event will be full of wonderful workshops and even a tour of her art studio. We got wind of this event back in September 09 and we really wanted to attend this artist dream trip. Unfortunately due to our schedules we weren't able to fit it in this year. Hopefully we'll be able to attend the next one or even be invited to do a Swirly Workshop(hint, hint). We still really wanted to get involved somehow to thank Mary and all her MEHC readers who supported us and became Swirly fans over the years. Our ads placed in her magazine over the years were very successful for us.

So we emailed them and explained that we wanted to do something and got lovely email back from Barbara Martin (that's her next to Mary in the photo) and together we decided that Swirly Designs will be including one of our handmade ornaments to the workshops goodie bags. We are very excited to be part of this wonderful event. So if you are planning on attending make sure you come back and email us and tell us all about it....and what you think of the ornament. :-)
Have a wonderful event!
Lianne & Paul