Swirly Studio Rainbow...BLUE

Studio Rainbow..
BA BA BLUE
We are in day 4 of the challenge, to see if we can gather a few objects around the studio matching the colors of the rainbow and share it here.
Today's color is BLUE
Which seems to be very fitting being such a gloomy day today.
Visit our Instagram account and use the hashtag #‎studiorainbowsupplies‬
What blue supplies do you have?

A Sweet + Swirly collaboration

 

These cookies will last forever!

We have been meaning to post this exciting news on the blog here for months but everything happened so fast this season, that we just kept getting side tracked.

But if you are following us on Facebook or

visited us at our craft shows this season you most likely already know. 

But for the few who may not know here is a quick run down. 

 

Dani Fiori, founder of SweetDaniB.com, is a cookie decorating expert. Her clients include Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren as well as many other party and event hosts who agree with her mantra that "Life is Sweet!". Her holiday cookies have been featured in several top publications such as 

Martha Stewart Living, Good Housekeeping and Real Simple. 

When Dani was looking for a way to preserve her cookie designs, she found us through social media earlier this year and thought what a great way to have her cookies last forever for her customers!  After a few chats through email we knew this was such a nice fit for both of us.  Dani has such beautiful cookie designs that we all felt feel and look of what we create here at Swirly Designs.  We are always looking for something new to offer each year and from the responses we received, everyone one felt the same way. A Sweet + Swirly collaboration was born! 

 

The two cookie designs we decided to try for this Christmas season was a Santa and a Snowglobe.

What we found challenging but also fun about creating these cookies is trying to replicate in clay the texture and color of gingerbread, making the clay resemble her white sprinkles for Santa's beard and searching for just the right seed beads for the snow in the Snowglobe. All the while making sure these designs represents Dani's cookies but also have that Swirly twist to them.

 

 

Comparing the faux with the real deal.

  These Snowglobe cookies are waiting for some sparkly glitter and paper snowflakes.

We were thrilled of how cute these Santas came out with their faux sprinkles beard, candy cherry nose and glittery suit.

 

As we were finishing up the final touches to these designs, Dani happened to be in the area in late October doing a show in Rhode Island; so she and her husband made a little detour after the show and stopped by to meet us, see the studio and the work in progress of the ornaments. 

You can check out her thoughts here.

 

What makes these limited edition ornaments extra sweet, is that they are all signed with love by Dani & Swirly Designs on the back and come packed similar to how Dani packages her real cookies!

If you missed out on getting your own Sweet + Swirly limited faux Santa or Snowglobe designs.  I believe we might have less then a hand full left. Pick one up now for next year or stay tuned to see if something else comes out of this yummy collaboration. ;-) 

Lianne, Dani, and Paul in the Swirly Studio.

Sweet + Swirly

Dani also treated our little ones with some of her really sweet cookies and these pictures say it all.   

Have a Sweet + Swirly Christmas!

Our American Made story

Hello!
Happy August! Can't believe how fast summer is flying by!

We received an email this week about Martha Stewart honoring 10 American Makers at an upcoming event they are hosting this fall.

If you are Creative Entrepreneurs who is making products that are innovative, inspiring and beautiful you should enter! We thought we would enter our little Swirlies into the mix and see what happens.  We will let you know how it goes. There might be some kind of voting come September that we might need some help on as well. 

Here is our page on the Martha Stewart site. We did notice that some of our profile text was cut off as well as weird cropping with some of our photos... so we thought we would re-post them again here:

Here is the full text that we uploaded:
Our American made story:

Welcome to Swirly Designs studio where we create holiday cheer all year!

We are Lianne & Paul Stoddard the artist and creators behind Swirly Designs where our passion for decorating for the holidays inspired us to combine our artistic skills to create our own collection of original handmade polymer clay ornaments.

Our story began in art school in Boston. I studied graphic design, while Paul majored in Illustration. In school, I dabbled in polymer clay. I made jewelry and pins for family and friends. I loved the way the clay was easy to use and I could create unique pieces.

After graduating, we both pursued work in our field but we were always drawn back to working with our hands. Going back to the medium that I discovered in school, we started to experiment with creating pieces in polymer clay.

We launched Swirly Designs right around the time we got married, in 2000. Being artists and designers we tend to be a little picky when searching for holiday ornaments for our own tree. Not finding exactly what were we looking, we decided to create our own ornaments using polymer clay.

Combining my graphic design sensibility and Paul’s illustrative talent we created whimsical pieces and started giving them as gifts to family and friends who then encouraged us to start selling them. We produced a small catalog one holiday season, taking our own pictures and designing the catalog ourselves. That proved to be a success, and the following year we got a booth at a local holiday craft show here in Boston. The response to our ornaments was so great! We sold lots of ornaments during that show plus heard lots of positive feedback from customers. This was enough encouragement for to us do this full time.

Each and every ornament is hand-sculpted, hand-painted and beautifully embellished by us as we interpret traditional holiday images through a contemporary lens all while juggling our growing family.

Our studio is always swirling with new and interesting holiday festivities and we are so blessed our ornaments have become part of so many people’s holiday traditions.  

-------------

 

 Wish us luck!

It’s Halloween Week! EEK!

It's Halloween week!
Even though the studio is now decked out in full Christmas decor as we prepare for this years Christmas collection, we thought we should take a little break this week to celebrate Halloween, since it’s coming up so soon! So all week we’ll share fun little treats all to do with Halloween.

To kick things off.....

For anyone looking to do some last minute Halloween crafting projects why don't you try to make one of these little spooky guys to add to your holiday decorations.
The instruction to create the mini ghost is here and you can find the pumpkin from here. Combine the two and then insert a 20 gauge wire through your ghost into the pumpkin before you bake them.
Then after cooled print out a little message and add crepe paper fringe and glue it to top of your wire.

Just a reminder, the queen of crafts Martha has her Halloween special tonight on the Hallmark Channel. You can check out the martha blog for a sneak peak into the making of the special.

image courtesy of Martha Stewart and Hallmark Channel

Will you be watching? We sure will!

What do you do on Easter Eve?

We craft of course!

It's the day before Easter and the weather today was just rainy and dreary. All our outside Easter activities were canceled so we decided to spend some time in the studio. Noticing all the empty egg cartons around the studio from our egg decorating we just had to think of something to do with all them and this is what we came up with.....


These petite little egg carton baskets with pipe cleaner handles....
how cute are these?


You can fill them with treats for your guests or use them
for place card holders for your Easter brunch.


They also make nice egg displays for that egg-stra special egg
you colored this week.


Our mini Swirly bunny loves her new home.


Even hang them on your Easter egg tree to greet your guest.


This basket is embellished with a glitter bunny made from
a Martha Stewart punch.


the possibilities are endless.
We want to wish all of you and your families a
most eggcellent Easter Sunday!
~Lianne & Paul

Oh how we LOVE gifts!

Happy Friday everyone!
Today we received a package from Martha Stewart.

Why you ask? Well back in February we entered a photo contest that they were running.
Last week we were notified from MarthaStewart.com that our Valentine Garland How-to project was one of the winners of the Martha Stewart Living Handmade Valentine Photo Contest they had on their website. Yeahhhh for us!


Our how-to garland project was created with the Martha Stewart Crafts heart shape punch.


It was so exciting to open the package and see what we won. Inside was a letter on MSLO letterhea, a 12 x 12 pad of spring colors scrapbook paper and one of her Punch around the Page set.

Thanks Martha for our gifts and we look forward to crafting with our new cool products.
Have a crafty weekend everyone!

Have you heard the news?

With everything going around here at the studio lately... getting prepared for the upcoming Holidays season and our little guy starting Kindergarten (sniff sniff)....we haven't had time to post a lot but we did want to remind you of another date to remember.... Not only does this day mark the launch of our New 2010 Halloween Autumn ornaments but Monday September 13th also is the start of the 6th season of the Martha Stewart Show which is moving to the Hallmark Channel. Smart move? I guess we will find out. But for us being huge Martha fans to be able to have large blocks of Martha programming all day is exciting! Plus we're looking forward to a new Halloween & Christmas special!

So on Monday morning get your coffee and check out our new designs while enjoying some Martha on the tube. Now that's a "Good Thing".

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.

Martha's Halloween treats and new TV season

The summer is winding down and fall is approaching, which means Halloween and the new fall TV line-up are on there way. As you all know by now, we are big admirers of Martha and we just wanted to share a few things to be on the look-out for:

The fifth season of The Martha Stewart Show begins on September 14th, so be sure to tune in for a full season of fun inspired creative ideas for the upcoming holidays.

Speaking of holidays be sure to pick up the new
Halloween special issue on sale August 31st (how cool is that cover!). And also you can sign-up at MarthaStewart.com for the Halloween workshop, which begins September 7th. Remember, we won a great gift when we submitted pictures to her Easter workshop.

A gift from Martha

Who doesn't love a free gift. A few months back the Martha Stewart website did a holiday workshops on their website. They have done Halloween workshops in the past and this year they did an Easter workshop. It's a great place to share holiday decorating ideas and pictures. They were also running a contest "Share Us your best Easter projects and Win", so we submitted a couple of our "how-to" projects. We weren't necessarily submitting to win but more for sharing our fun how-to projects. We entered our Springtime Swirly Carrot and the Mini Swirly Bunny

....well a few weeks ago we were notified that we were chosen as one of the winners. YEAH!!!
We were very excited to have been picked and our prize arrived today in the mail:



a 320GB Seagate FreeAgent® Go portable hard drive with docking station to store our favorite photos, videos, music, and more.

Thank you very much Martha & MSLO :)

Swirly Designs top 5 favorite Martha Stewart craft tools

In celebration of the New Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Craft book and being such Martha admirers we thought it would be fun share our top 5 favorite Martha craft tools we love to use here in the Swirly studio.

I'm sure everyone has their own list and we would love to here from you on what are your go-to tools when working in your craft studio.

#5 Favorite Craft Tool .......

A self healing 12 x 12 cutting board.
At first we didn't think we would use this product because our craft table has a huge cutting board covering it, but what is great about this is that it's small enough to take it anywhere. And as you know once you get into a project somehow your desk disappears under all work and stuff and if you need top cut something out you can place it on the floor or an empty space and cut away!

#4 Favorite Craft Tool .......

Martha has a huge selection of paper punches.
You really can find almost any kind of image. We tend like to simpler shapes like the scalloped circle or the tag shape– shapes we might be able to use with our ornaments. The handle is comfortable to use and the blades are sharp. We were even able to cut out felt with one of the punches.

#3 Favorite Craft Tool .......

Is actually a tie between the Baker's Twine and the Holiday white glitters.

We love this baker's twine. It's so cute to tie up a little gift box. We have also used it for some of our mini ornament designs. Not only did it come in the peppermint stripe but also came in Halloween colors and assorted colors.

Everyone loves glitter and Martha has come out with a beautiful palette of colored glitters but for us here we tend to use mostly the white clear glitters so the painting and colors of the ornaments comes through. The winter set came with crystal, snow and marble glitters that resemble old vintage glitters.

#2 Favorite Craft Tool .......

Precision craft scissors
Here in the studio we have a lot of scissors and definitely some are better then others. Some scissors are used to cut different materials etc. These scissors are exactly what it says precision. They come with a cover to protect that fine tip and be warned these are not for young kids... they are extremely sharp and we know that from experience... ouch!! They cut the tiniest of string and because they come to a point you can reach into corners.

And now for the #1 Swirly Designs pick for their Favorite Craft Tool..

drumroll please......



Artist Glue Pens
Yes, a little weird I know. But for us, when we were looking for a better way to apply glue to our ornaments without ruining another paint brush these glue pens were our saving grace. These work wonderfully! You can apply glue to an small area and sprinkle with glitter and you don't have to worry about your glue and brush drying up. Our only suggestion is you might want to pick up quite a few because they do tend to run out pretty fast. And if the tip is applied onto a rough surface it can become a little ragged.


So there you go. Swirly Designs' favorite Martha craft tools that we enjoy. What are your favorite tools to use in your craft studio?

Maybe we make this a running series of our favorite things.

Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!