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.  

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 Wish us luck!

Swirly in the Sweet Life

Looking for some sweet holiday inspiration? Then be sure to visit Simply the Sweet Life and check out their FREE online 2011 Holiday magazine .
It's full of wonderful holiday ideas and delicious recipes and Swirly:)
Yes our new mini woodland winter set graces the pages (page 32_33) of this whimsical issue .


Image above is from Simply the Sweet Life Magazine Holiday issue



Image above is from Simply the Sweet Life Magazine Holiday issue

Check out the eZine and tell them Swirly said hi!
Below area few more close up shots we took of this
7 piece Woodland Winter set.

Mushroom, Little Owl and snowy pine cone


snowflake and candy cane

glittery star and starry night

There is still a few of these sets available so be sure to pick up yours today.
Have a Sweet and Swirly Holiday! SORRY SOLD OUT!

Swirling in Celebrate 365 Magazine

We were so thrilled to been asked to submit a few of our new Halloween ornament designs for the upcoming double issue of Celebrate 365 magazine. This issue will combine late summer with Halloween designs for everyone's enjoyment.

The two swirlies that were chosen were our Candy Corn Owl and our Sweet Little Candy Corn Witch. Both of these sweet little swirly designs are perfect to celebrate the upcoming Halloween season and will be available online on September 26th along with the rest of our new Halloween/ Autumn collection. And to order a copy of Celebrate 365 magazine check out Connie's website here.


Enjoy your weekend, When do you start decorating for Halloween?

Yummy!

My mouth is watering here in the studio for some candy corn!
Why you ask? We're working on painting these yummy owls in candy corn colors for our new Halloween Ornament collection coming soon:)
I think a trip to the candy store is in order, what do you think?

Whooo loves ya!

One of our favorite collectors Meagan, made a comment on our Facebook page a few weeks ago about how she enjoys our little Seasonal Swirly Owl ornament designs. So we thought it might be a fun post to look back at our many Swirly owl designs we created over the years.

It all started with our very first owl ornament design (above) we created back in 2008 for our Halloween collection. We knew we wanted a spooky owl in our collection, and even though our owl wasn't really spooky, the challenge was to design him in our swirly style: whimsical and unique... while keeping him recognizable as an owl. So we kept the color palette to tones of browns with big yellow glittery eyes. Then on a more recent Halloween collection we even created one batch of owls with glow in the dark eyes...super cool!

Our little Swirly Owl has been a big hit with everyone for years and now has been making appearances in our other collections. It has become one of the few series of designs we have created.


This Swirly Snow Owl is from our Holiday 2010. Sitting on top of an evergreen tree all warm and cozy with his red felt scarf.


This was a custom piece for another collector who buys a bunch of ornaments for all her employees for Christmas.


Our Valentine's Owl flew in with tones of reds & pinks celebrating the day of love with a yummy box of candies.


Our Spring owl in bloom.


.....and our most recent addition was our patriotic owl waving our flag proudly.

It was a hoot looking back at our past designs:) Since we only make a limited amount of each design we are so glad we remember to take pictures of our ornaments collections before they fly off to their new homes.