A Mini Tree Make-Over

 

We had so many things we wanted to share with you during the Christmas season, but time always seems to get away from us, and we never get our posts up. Well until now, so even though this might be a Christmas project you could be crazy like us and display your trees all year round... so this idea is for you now or pin this for Christmas 2014. 

We did a mini makeover on this 30" green table top tree we picked up at one of our many visits to Homegoods over the past holiday season.

(btw Homegoods is one of our favorite spots to find all types of holiday trees)    

 Wish we had a shot of the tree base. Its base was in a brown burlap bag with foe fur wrapped around it...it was oh so UGLY.  So we had to look past that and focus on the tree. We liked the color, height and the branches were easy to bend. We have been looking for a natural looking tree to display our mini woodland collection and this one  fit the bill and for $14.99  how could we not.  At another outing to HG we picked up this pot with bark on it and was saving it for the right tree. Yay!!

How~To: When we removed the burlap from the tree we were left with a small square block of cement in a styrofoam base. We removed the styrofaom and left the cement block. Then we gathered some rocks and a small bucket of quick-setting cement. We added the rocks to bottom of the pot to level the tree. We put  tree in the pot then mixed the cement. We found using a plastic spoon made it easy to scoop and pack down.

 Once the cement was packed down and smoothed over with the back of the spoon we used a wet paper towel to wipe the pot edges before the cement hardens.

**Suggestion: Once the cement hardens in the pot it became rather heavy. We preferred this since we were using it as a display at the craft show and we wouldn't have to worry about it falling over. But if you are using it for your home decor you might want to add more rocks around the sides, so you use less cement. 

The cement should harden in less than a day. We added moss to cover the base and embellished with pine cones and cinnamon sticks to give it that woodland appeal.

See how a simple little make over can turn this little tree into a treasure. We are sure this tree will be hanging around our home well into the spring season. We can already see bunnies and eggs displayed on this beauty.

Share with us your own holiday tree projects or if you have one that needs a little sprucing up, send us a photo and maybe we can help.   info@swirlydesigns.com 

Back to the drawing board

As the New Year approaches, it's a perfect time to regroup and reflect on our business and the goals we want to make for the upcoming year.

I spent the month of December listening to Bonnie Glendinning The Thriving Artist online summit while working on our Christmas ornament collection. Bonnie interviewed a wide range of creative experts in the fields of licensining, art lawyers, authors, art coaches etc. I find it so inspiring to listen to other creatives talk about their process and work style.

Listening to these interviews while painting the ornaments, I felt like I was getting two things done at once. Learning and working...it was a win win.

One particular interview struck a chord with me. They mentioned that every artist should find or make the time to sketch for at least 15 minutes a day. It made me stop and think....Why don't I? It doesn't seem like an impossible thing to do. We do plenty of sketching when designing a holiday collection but imagine all the ideas we could come up with sketching every day.

So one of the goals this year is to do just that. I'm going to set aside 15 minutes a day to just sketch. If you are like me and get a little intimidated about sketching directly into a nice sketch book (it sometimes feel so permanent) then I might just doodle on blank paper first before transferring the ideas into the book. I like doing it that way because I tend to write down thoughts while sketching, create random doodles and shapes...I end up all over the place.

I will keep you updated on how it goes.

What are some ways you keep your creative juices flowing each and every day? Please share!

Decorating for Valentine's

We love creating and making beautiful ornaments to adorn your our Swirly fans homes for every holiday to the point we sometimes get side tracked and forget to decorate our own home.

So yesterday toward the end of the work day, we had a little time to spare (which is rare for us) as we were cleaning the studio up. As we started organizing the colorful paper we have collected, we thought hmmm we could either stay in the studio and clean....or take some of that cute paper and dress up our entryway. YES that's it!

Here is the result! Using scrapbook paper and a  few other items we totally transformed out entryway into a Valentine's showcase. Oh so sweet and very easy to do it yourself as well!

We made this picture gallery wall last fall and yet their are still picture frames without family pictures in them. So this was a perfect opportunity to put some pretty magazine pictures or decorative paper into the frames and voila the wall sings Valentine's. 

We added what few of our own ornaments we had left over from our Valentine's collection to this yarn wrapped tree we picked up at West Elm this past Christmas.

Our tweet heart bird cage sample sits on a square shadow box with a fabric greeting card inside. We love to frame greeting cards!

We made this snowflake shadow box as a mock-up for a possible how-to. But now it's happily displayed on our wall.

As you all know we are fans of magazines especially holiday related issue (see here and here just to refresh)  So we when came across this display piece that someone was throwing out we knew exactly what we could use it for.  It's fun going thorough old holiday issues and displaying them each holiday. 

 

This gold table top tree is the only permanent tree that we have in the house all year long (not including the trees in the studio of course). It greets our guest as they enter our home. It's mostly decked out in gold woodland ornaments but we'll add a spot of color to give it a seasonal pop! Adding a few seasonal ornaments, some beads, and a piece of 12 x1 2 scrapbook glitter paper under the tree and it is transformed.

 

On the other side of the entryway we have a shelf above where we hang coats.  A perfect place for more frames that we filled with valentine images. Books and other items share the shelf as well.

So simple and so rewarding... in less than an hour we transformed our entryway into a Valentine's gallery. So what if it's only up for only a few weeks and so what if only a few family members will see it. Hey maybe the UPS man will appreciate it:)

Do you decorate your home for Valentine's?  Which room do you decorate the most for the holidays?

Happy Valentine's

~Lianne & Paul

Images from our Valentine's Collection

 

Happy Valentine's Day! With only 11 days to go we can finally take a little breather knowing our Swirly cupid has delivered all the orders that came in since our launch on the 28th.  Just so you know you can still order all the way up to and even after Valentine's.  These designs are nice for a little girl's birthday, a baby shower or if you just want to show someone you care. 

  

With every collection we launch we'll take more than enough photos and even though we only had 12 designs in our 2013 Valentine's ornament collection we ended up taking over 300+ images to make sure we get the best shots to represent our collection.  Having so many pretty shots that didn't make the cut we thought we would share some of our favorites.

Love Young House Love!

I know this isn't a DIY blog, but boy do I love to follow DIY blogs. One of my all time favorites is Young House Love. I can't remember exactly how I came across it, but it has been at least a few years that I have been following the blogging husband and wife team, Sherry & John from Virginia. I just love reading about their DIY projects and being inspired to try a few of my own. Their following has grown and they recently published a book of DIY ideas to inspire others. If that wasn't enough, they are on a book tour! Paul and I were lucky enough to go to the book launch that our local West Elm was having. And yes, over the past year or so I've made Paul read many of YHL posts, and he's come to enjoy them as much as I have. So he was excited to meet them also. I was probably one of the few people who DIDN'T preorder the book, so I was looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.

And my mom was excited to come over and babysit the kids for us, so it was a WIN WIN situation -we couldn't pass up this chance.

The event was on Wednesday Nov. 7, and if you're from New England you know that we were in for a major Nor'Easter storm, and boy was it a doozy! We thought that it might be cancelled, but we called and thankfully it was still on. We made our way in to town for the event not knowing what to expect. The event was scheduled for 6-8. We arrived at 5 and there was already a huge line! Thankfully the line was inside because outside the storm bearing down on the city. The West Elm staff did a wonderful job of organizing this event. They had servers passing around hot cocoa and yummy cookies.

At around 6pm John and Sherry got to their seats and the line started to move, albeit very slowly. But we didn't mind, because we knew they were chatting it up with everyone and taking pictures. Earlier in the week we were tossing around the idea of bringing them some of our ornaments as a gift. Since we're so close to Thanksgiving, we thought our very popular Turkey ornaments would be perfect! We packaged them up carefully so it could make the trip back to Virginia with them.

By the time it was our turn to meet them it was almost 7:30. We were nervous, but they were so warm and personable. We got a picture with them and presented them with our gift... they were so thankful!

So despite the horrible New England snow storm, it was a great event and we love the book and we love Young House Love!! I would suggest to anyone wanting some great DIY inspiration to follow their blog and go out and get their book!


Disclosure: We weren't paid or asked to review or talk about the book, this is just something that we LOVE here at Swirly!

Would you like a tour of our Garden?

 Ok here you go....that's it... thanks for coming! Bye! Bye!

Yes, we know it's not that impressive :( Every summer we say this is the year we are going to start a garden and then we realize.... WOW! it's a lot of work! Do we have the time for the up keep and care a garden requires? Unfortunately we don't think so. Plus there are so many others who are so much better at it than we are.

But we are so enthralled with the idea of growing our own vegetables and herbs for our family, that we may have lost sight on actually how much work it is. We always dream of being able to send the kids out to fetch yummy food from the garden for dinner... oh well! Hopefully some day we will have that beautiful garden, but for now we'll have to start small. Really, really small...what we have now is two wine bottle crates for our raised beds. 

And really the only reason we have those is because a friend of ours asked if we wanted some of her extra orange cherry tomatoes plants. Better late than never, right?

The good news? So far so good! We have been getting some mini orange tomatoes!

And early on, while we were getting the dirt for our wine boxes, we got hooked into buying a cucumber plant and a green pepper one. I don't think these should be this close together and I think the cucumber needs a very large trellis. Both are not fairing so well.

We also have a mint plant, though we're still not really should how to incorporate that into the stuff we cook.

...and finally our very sad little pea pod plant that our son brought home from school. We will be lucky if we ever get a pea before winter comes. 

If anything we have a whole new appreciation for everyone who works endless hours in their own gardens. I'm sure the rewards are so worth it. We are going to go and sit and enjoy our fresh beatiful orange cherry tomatoes!

What fruits of your labor have you been harvesting this summer?

Our Sketchbook Story

If you are like us and enjoy reading and seeing the thought process of how creative people create their work, then you must check out the site called: BluPenny Sketchbook Stories by artist Cindy Ann Ganaden.

Each Tuesday she profiles an artist who share a glimpse into their sketchbook and what inspires the work they create. We came across Cindy Ann's site on Twitter a few months ago and we were hooked. We must have read every sketchbook story in a night and we are happy to say that Swirly Designs is now part of this fun series.

Go and check out our Sketchbook Story here and leave a comment letting BluPenny your thoughts on our story!

Road trip to the Eric Carle Museum

Over the weekend we took the kids on a little road trip to the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. Being both artists, we have been very eager to visit this museum since it opened but felt we wanted to make sure the kids were at an age where they would appreciate it and would enjoy the experience... plus handle the long 2 hour drive.

Even better, we found out this month that our little guy was learning all about Eric Carle in school. He was even creating his own "Eric Carle" artwork in school and thought this was perfect real life education for him. So we packed up the car and made the trip.

Any one who has kids, we're sure you are very familiar with his work, especially his 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This is a staple in our kids bedtime reading routine.

This very modern and simplistic museum was a pleasant treat.




We hit the museum on a very quiet Saturday morning which was perfect for letting the kids explore and roam without the crowds of people. The very spacious 40,000 square foot building houses three Galleries that are dedicated to exhibitions of picture book art.

One gallery is dedicated to Eric Carle's work and the two other galleries are changing exhibitions of artwork. No photography is allowed in the galleries but you can snap away everywhere else.

A favorite spot that the kids enjoyed immediately is the big Caterpillar sculpture that doubled as a bookcase. The kids had fun running around it and through it and finally sitting inside just long enough for us to snap a few pictures.


Besides the galleries, there is a library, a cafe, a store and an art studio for the kids to create and explore.


We all enjoyed the art studio where you can create fun projects with all sorts of materials. This neat magnetic board has magnets made from branch pieces and painted in fun colors.


Color coded jars lined up on a shelf like a rainbow.

There were many tables for the kids to create and make their own masterpieces.

This was a neat experience to share with the whole family and spark your inner creativity.
We left there inspired and ready to go back to the studio and play.


We are off on another adventure to explore and learn something new.

Have you been to the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA? Share your thoughts on your visit!

Have a good week.