Looking back and planning ahead

Happy New Year everyone!
We have finally recovered from another crazy good Christmas season. We hope everyone enjoyed giving and getting their new Swirly Designs this year.
The week between Christmas and New Years is our down time where we try to do very little (which seems never to be the case). We spent it cleaning and organizing the studio, some bookkeeping and making goals for 2012, personal and business related.

While making the goals for the 2012 we found us looking back at what Swirly has accomplished in 2011 and we thought we would share a few highlights. And also share our hopes for the New Year.

Our Studio...
was profiled in Studios magazine, which was a big thrill for us. Lianne especially enjoyed this because it was the perfect excuse she needed to tackle the studio closet and make it over. (you can sneak a peek at the closet at the bottom of this post. (Maybe later this year we will do a whole post on the studio closet). In 2012 we are actually gathering more shots of the studio for another profile that will be coming out this Spring.

Our Collections...
Starting last year off with a clean and organized studio, we were able to free our minds and create A LOT! This lead to a record 6 holiday collection for us. New additions were our Patriotic Collection as well as a mini Thanksgiving treat. In 2012 we hope to continue creating new and fun designs for 2012. You can be sure that we will be adding our mini's into each launch. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the mini winter wonderland collection we had online as well as at the two craft shows we did.

Promotion...
was big for us in 2011 not just for our studio but for us as well. Swirly was profiled in Christmas Ideas magazine, Celebrate 365 magazine, Simply the Sweet life eZine, plus an artist Sketchbook Stories interview. In 2012 we are hoping to continue this run. We are always very excited to be chosen to have our work profiled and it really helps us get our ornaments and name to a larger audience. But we must admit, out of everything we do for the business, this is by far the hardest and most time consuming task. With the press we got this year there were months of planning, researching companies submission deadlines, coming up with new project ideas to meet their deadlines, emails and waiting. Then racing to photograph and writing copy. So when it does work out you feel all that crazy work you did all year was not for nothing and the other half dozen or so non responses don't seem to matter that much any more (at least that what's we keep saying to ourselves... who are we kidding it matters!)

Social Media...
Facebook was a nice surprise for us this year. Not only for promoting Swirly Designs but also in connecting with our customers. We loved sharing our thoughts and work in progress to our wall. We have a nice following of over 700+ likes in 2011 (our goal this year to reach 7,000 likes ha ha:) We also forged a nice working collaboration with Polyform Products, the company that makes all the clay we use for our ornaments. Together, we created three seasonal how-to projects for their website: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2012 we agreed to create 5 more projects through out the year. The first one being a Valentine’s project. Keep an eye out for that!

As we are writing this and reflecting on all that happened in 2011 for Swirly Designs it was a pretty good year after all and it's going to be a challenge to top it in 2012...but we are really going to try and hopefully you all will come along for the ride.

We always remind ourselves, as we are designing new collections, how lucky we are to have such wonderful support from all of you!

Happy New Year!
~Lianne & Paul

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!

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