Hurray for Apples and Pumpkins!!

With our crazy schedules and every weekend we were available to go it would rain. But this past weekend we finally managed to enjoy a beautiful crisp, fall day and go apple picking with the family. The weather was perfect and the apples were yummy. Here are few pics of the fun day of apple picking and running through the pumpkin patch. We also indulged in the delicious homemade cinnamon donuts...We spared you the shots of us eating them.
Happy Fall





Gryffin was very excited tasting the different kinds of apples, trying to decide his favorite.








They had tons of these bumpy pumpkins which they were calling "Kunckle heads"

A Halloween BLOG Party!

Mark your computer calendars for Saturday Oct 18th and let's have a Halloween Blog party!!!
Swirly Designs is taking part of this fun event hosted by at Fanciful Twist Blog. What is a blog party? you can check out Fanciful Twist blog where she can explain it much better then we can and has lost of fun photo examples, but basically a bunch of bloggers will share everything and anything Halloween related showing you great ideas and inspiration to celebrate the second most popular holiday of the year...Halloween.

We will post how to create a eye ball tree topper for your Halloween tree, show some of our halloween collectibles etc. It should be a spooktaluar time. So tell your friends and stop on by Saturday Oct 18th for a fanciful and swirly time.

Decorating for Halloween

Through out the month of October we thought we would share some of the fun decorations & collectibles we have been buying over the years. We love this time of year and look forward to preparing for the big day: All Hallows Eve. Here is a something we came across this season. This cool 13" tall canister with a pumpkin head top. Can't you just see this item sitting on your Halloween entry table filled with candy corn candies or black ornaments blubs or maybe creepy rubber eyes balls. Spooky!

How do you like to decorate for Halloween? Share with us some of your fun Halloween finds.

** Coming up on our next post well let you know about the Halloween BLOG party happening on the 18th of October.

What a Treat from Matthew Mead

We received a rather large package in mail today, at the studio. And we just had to share it with everyone. The package was from Matthew Mead ,the author of the Matthew Mead Halloween Tricks and Treats book. We posted here on our blog our review of his book and submitted it to another blog who was having a contest. To our surprise and delight we were one of the winners! What a treat! Check it out– we thought we were just getting an autograph copy of his book but oh no, we got sooo much more....



All these treats came in a cool orange photo box. The box was wrapped with a festive ribbon and carried a handmade Halloween tag. The presentation was so nice we didn't want to open it. Inside the box, there was lots of fun treats: a black bag and a handmade box full of goodies and a wonderful little ceramic owl that was photographed in the Owl-oween Party chapter in the Halloween book.



The box was sealed with ribbon and had this fun Halloween tag on it.



Along with the autograph Halloween book Matthew included a preview of his new Entertaining Simple book. Thanks again Matthew for the treats!!

Our seasonal Swirly Stickers have arrived!

We received at the studio this week our new swirly circle stickers. If you have been to our craft show or have purchased one of our ornaments you know what we are talking about. For those who haven't... each of our ornaments comes in it's own box and is sealed with a colored vellum band and has our circle sticker on it. At first we only had a green sticker for the holidays and then last year we made a hot pink design for our Valentine collection. Now, since we are doing different holidays we just ordered one for Autumn and one for Spring. These may seem so simple, but they add such a nice touch to the look of the package and make it look special. Have a nice weekend!




So here the one we use for the Holidays

our Valentine sticker

our new Autumn sticker


and here is our new Spring sticker

Fall is here and we are all sick!! Plus Paul's seminar review

Ahh, Fall. The weather is getting cooler the leaves are starting to turn. Apple and pumpkin picking season is in full swing and here at the Swirly studio we are all sick!!! That is the main reason for the delay on the blog. We want to and really try to update this weekly, but some weeks are harder than others.

Besides all being sick, we did still manage to keep busy. Paul finished two illustration projects and we are in the thick of production with our ornaments. We are just about finished choosing the pieces we will have in our new baby and holiday 2008 collection. More on that when we get closer to our release date (Nov 1st).

Paul here: On our last post we mention that I would be attending a workshop by Carol Eldridge Designs on Art Licensing. Check out Carol's website she gave a great detailed descriptions with photos of the days event. I would highly recommend attending one of Carol's future seminars if you have any interest at all about marketing or licensing your artwork. She has been around for a while and knows her stuff. She was honest and was very open to answer any and all questions (even my crazy ones!). She had many informative stories and lots of samples to see. Plus she served a wonderful lunch and gave us all a booklet of her presentation, which I was very grateful since I am horrible about taking good notes.

Seminars are a great way to get yourself back on track again and motivate yourself. We have been tossing the idea around for years of how we should take our swirly designs and put them on products and now I think we have the know how do just that. Thanks Carol!!

A typical week here at the Swirly studio

This week has been really crazy here at the Swirly Designs studio. We are shipping our Halloween /Autumn ornaments daily. We are designing and creating our new line of Christmas and baby 2008 ornaments for our Nov 1st launch. We also created these two ads below. One for MEHC magazine and Romantic Homes magazine... and on top of all that, this weekend Paul will be attending a workshop by Carol Eldridge designs on Art Licensing. It looks like it will be a very interesting workshop and we are looking forward to learning how we could take our Swirly Designs to the next level.




This is the ad we put in the Dec/Jan issue of Mary Engelbriet's Home Companion which hits newsstands on Nov 4th



This will be our first time advertising in Romantic Homes magazine. We will have this ad in the Dec issue. That one hits newsstands Nov 4th.