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.

Getting back in the Swirl of things

We have finally recovered (some what) from the crazy Christmas season and now we are planning ahead for the new year. This year we want to get a head start and be better organized for all the upcoming Holidays that are quickly approaching We have got a bunch of new desk and wall clendars, dry erase boards & stacks of TO DO pads all around the studio. Are you all aware that Easter is April 4th this year... yikes!

But today here in the studio it's all about love. We have been busy sketching new ideas for our Valentine collection...we know...we're behind! I guess the organization resolution isn't working out so great! Stay tune for more updates on when the collection will be launched.

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What have we been up to?

Where has the month gone? It's Thanksgiving weekend and we haven't posted anything for this month..eek! We found a sliver of free time so we are going to cram a few posts in before it is officially December.

Here is a sneak peak of what we have been doing all month long at the studio.... we are getting ready to launch our Christmas collection on Dec 1st. We have been busy sculpting and painting and glittering lots and lots of ornaments (we are still trying to clean up all the glitter!)

Hope you'll be able to stop by our website on the 1st to check them out.




These shots were taken when the ornaments had a coat of varnish on them. We balance each ornament on a paint bottle so the sides can dry with out sticking—I know, real hi-tech, huh?

Here you can see some of the dangler pieces getting ready to be attached to the ornaments.

Swirly Designs: How it all started

Since we have been decluttering the studio the last couple of weeks we came across a box sitting high on top of our bookcase that was filled with some of our early test ornaments. We thought we would share with you the stories behind some of the earlier Swirly Designs.

This was one of Lianne's first commission pieces from 1997. She created a pin with a leaf motif for a charity auction that, at the time, Paul was a part of. She had to create approx 150 pins in less than two weeks. She pulled it off and the the pins were a huge success for the charity.




These two ornaments were really the spark that started whole company. Lianne created these for her personal Christmas cards. As a designer she always designed her own card every year but now she added a little something extra with the cards...an original ornament!


As we both began doing more and more designs we also got requests for commission pieces. A friend of ours approached us about creating favors for a bridal shower with an ocean/water theme. We came up with this cute magnet showing a boy and girl fish kissing in a fish bowl. The magnets turned out great and the bride thought they were a great remembrance of the day.




With this earlier ornament above, we were experimenting a bit more. We were trying different kinds of swirls in the background and the 3D snake texture for the tree etc.




We have also created larger pieces like this door plaque. We have one for every season and we have done a few for kids rooms as well. We also tried experimenting with different types of ribbon, shown above, embellished with a colored bead before we settled on shear chiffon ribbon for our ornaments.


One of our earlier retail accounts was a local garden center. They carried our ornaments in their gift shop during the holiday season. This "Eggplant Seeds" ornament was a part of our garden seed package collection. We thought it would be nice to tie in these garden designs to better target their clientele. We started to then realize that our designs didn't have to be strictly Christmas themed.


This Swirly Dove Wreath was one of our biggest sellers when we launched our catalog back in 2002.

The interesting story behind this is since we usually create small quantities of our designs, this one was an early sell out. For the next year we decided to double or we might have even tripled the amount we made and unfortunately we never did sell the same amount as in the past.
The lesson learned is that you can never predict what your customers are going to like. Plus we would rather have them wanting more than having too many leftovers.

As you can see, our ornaments are constantly evolving and we are always reworking them to keep them fresh. We love trying new and different things with them and we like to see what our customers will respond too.