Monday, January 5, 2009

Happy 2009!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I was absent from blogland as I was working on keeping my booth stocked at the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, and spending time with the fam. There were a lot of really fantastic artists at Blue Genie this year, and despite the current economy, sales were strong. Rose & Duke sold a decent amount of items, but I was expecting to sell way more and so now I have a lot of stock to fill my site and some local shops. That is what I will be spending the next few weeks doing; photographing items, uploading them, and taking samples around. I am super bad about updating my webshop, and my 2009 resolution is to make time to keep it current.

In crafty news, I had a fun time doing an ornament swap with some great bloggers. It was called the "Los Locos Calicos" swap, and I'll post a link to the flickr group as soon as more folks have uploaded their photos (hint hint ladies). I received the cutest ever Christmas bunny pom pom ornament from Frizz. It came inside a hand-pained wooden box which I now keep my barrettes in. I'm linking you to her photos of the critter, because she took really great ones. I ended up sending out two ornaments. The one that I made for the swap is this one:
I hand embroidered sliver thread onto blue wool felt . It wasn't that easy to remove the stabilizer, let me tell you.

I ended up making a batch of these birdie and vintage millinery flower ornaments. I had a box of vintage wooden thread spools in a drawer and the inspiration just hit me. I ended up including one in the swap.

Sorry for the overexposed photo. My other 2009 resolution is to take better photos. I end up rushing a lot and the results are not always pretty.

Guess what awesome thing happened chez Dunlap? Our ruby grapefruit tree gave us the sweetest grapefruit ever! A hail storm knocked off all but one, and here she is:


We also had a Christmas visit from my mother, and she and Harlan made a gingerbread house together:
Please note the Playmobil midevil guards out front. Somebody put them there to ensure that no one else tried to eat the house. This, after receiving the Jen Corace Illustrated Hansel and Gretel from Sanata. It's the loveliest rendition of the story I have ever read.

7 comments:

priyabeverlymoon said...

Good to have you back and with so much good news. I love seeing your home-grown grapefruit and it sure looks as though Judy and Harlan are having fun with the gingerbread house.

Girl Land said...

Love the ornaments! My 3 yr old received that version of Hansel & Gretel too, and I love it so much. Gretel's clothing alone won me over. Adorable. :)

Girl Land said...

You're a dear to have commented on MY blog AND to think that that popover pan was mine. :) I, also, use a muffin pan. That picture was from some foodie site. I was hoping people wouldn't have caught the explanation in my post and think that's how my popovers look! HA!!! My plan worked. ;)

Brook said...

Love the spool birdie ornament!!! so cute!

Anonymous said...

happy new year! it sounds like you've been busy with good things over the holiday season, and your resolution will keep you busy. i admire that you've really been getting your act together with your business, and hopefully things will continue to progress well over the next year. xo!

Kami said...

We had delicious sweet ruby red grapefruit from our tree this year too! We bought that tree for our Christmas tree four years ago... this year it finally produced a bumper crop, here in Austin, TX.

the fabled needle (jen) said...

i want those bird ornaments!!

i just got that same copy of hansel and gretel; i love jen corace's work so much.

ok, i'm off to spend more money than i would like to at whole foods. seems like it's the only place that has gluten + dairy + soy-free food. (yes, i'm adding soy to my list of possible troublemakers - axis of evil!!)