Art & Home Accessories

Our friend Clark has turned what used to be a family hobby into a full-time business. In his Longmont studio, he makes delightful cast beeswax candles that come in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes, including several designs that are cast in traditional European holiday season candle molds. This year, we are also offering Amber Lights hand-dipped beeswax taper candles and Shabbat candles.

Amber Lights candles are highly decorative, wonderfully detailed, naturally endowed with a heavenly honey scent, and burn clean and smokeless. 

Hanukkah begins Thursday, December 7th. A set of dripless, smokeless, hand-dipped beeswax candles from Amber Lights contains all the candles you’ll need to light the Menorah through the entire 8-day holiday. And they smell wonderful! And they come in a lovely blue mesh bag. And they are Local. And if you have no use for Hanukkah candles, we have everything from birthday candles to 6″ pillars, bee-skeps to Buddha heads, Deco to dragons, reindeer to roses, all beautifully crafted from our friend Clark at Amber Lights.

Amy Mundinger of Pine Tree Studios is truly a gifted craftswoman, with a keen eye for color and design, and well-honed skills in fiber arts from crochet to embroidery, felting to block-printing, and free-motion quilting with hand-dyed 100% cotton fabrics. Amy is an active and prominent member of the Handweavers Guild of Boulder.

Their name may lead you to believe that they are a law firm or financial advisor. But to the contrary, Dana Jones and Amy Baxter are two Niwot moms who began sewing face masks at the onset of the pandemic and found they enjoyed working with fabric so much that they kept going, making charming, retro-styled all-cotton aprons (for grown-ups and kids), tea towels, placemats, napkins and new tote bags. Amy and Dana use soft, absorbent cotton flour-sack material for their casual towels and tableware, and source their accent fabrics from local independent shops.

Inspired by Colorado’s wildlife and the outdoors, Amanda Maldonado makes delightful drawings of local animals in pen and ink. This year, we’re selling prints of these fun, hand-illustrated critters, and her brilliant, Watercolor Postcard Kits! 

This kit has everything you need to color in some fun barn animal postcards using watercolor! Watercolor allows you to blend and customize the color you want on the paper more easily than markers, crayons, and coloring pencils. The kit includes 5 postcards, a palette of 6 watercolors, and a free water brush pen. Amanda has hand-made her own luscious watercolor paints from locally collected plant materials! 

Our customer and friend Diane Patterson makes these wonderful ornaments, called Temari, which date back to ancient Japan, where Temari was originally a handcraft of upper class women. Intricate designs were embroidered on handmade balls using silk threads from kimonos. The balls were used as toys.

Temari are unique, beautiful, colorful gifts. Attractive hanging as a single ornament, grouped in a bowl, used in a centerpiece, given as a housewarming gift, or simply to hold and admire, they will be treasured for many years.

Elyse is part of a new generation of potters putting a modern twist on a centuries-old decorative technique called sgraffito, an Italian word meaning “to scratch” which was especially prominent in Italian Renaissance architectural plaster work as well as African and Southwestern American Indian pottery.

We were delighted to meet Elyse at an Art Walk event in Longmont. Elyse’s work is bold, modern, and geometric, using black slip over white clay, and will fit into any modern or eclectic setting. Each striking piece is expertly handmade and one-of-a-kind.

Erin Huybrechts Davis says she has been a painter for as long as she can remember. She grew up on the east coast, has her degree in painting and printmaking, and a masters degree in education. She now lives here in Longmont, CO, where she is a freelance illustrator and teaches art to young people.

We were struck by her flowing, stylized and poetic depictions of the natural world. She is inspired by patterns and imagery from Asia, where she has traveled, and this influence is evident in her work as well. We are delighted to offer Erin’s cards, prints, and original paintings again this year!

Eve’s friend Sue Hagedorn is a Longmont fiber artist. She has brought us an assortment of beautiful indigo-dyed napkins, table linens, scarves and fabulous dyed recycled clothing.

An Anchorage, AK native, she became interested in indigo dyeing at a workshop there and was drawn to its healing and quiet contemplative properties. She has explored the traditional Japanese art of Shibori (a method of folding and tying to produce dye-resist patterns), and dyeing with a variety of natural materials on natural fiber fabrics, table linens, clothing and paper of all kinds. Sue also teaches indigo dye workshops outdoors during the warm months.

Our amazingly gifted friend Kathleen Lanzoni is an acclaimed watercolor painter and an award-winning signature member of the Colorado Watercolor Society, the Western Colorado Watercolor Society, the Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Society and the Western Federation of
Watercolor Societies. She grew up in Montreal and California and has lived in Colorado for over 28 years. Residing in Boulder, Kathleen divides her time painting between the studio, Plein Air (outdoors on location) and on-site murals.

The list of her well-deserved awards is a mile long. We are featuring prints and notecards of her luminous paintings.

Kylee Covili creates fascinating, one-of a kind found-art assemblages for your walls, as well as jewelry! Her work is inspired by a love of vintage treasures which she repurposes and transforms into something entirely new. 

Kylee says: “I believe there is beauty in the discarded and overlooked, and I strive to create a sense of harmony and balance in my work that reflects my inspired imagination.”

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Years ago, Julie and Eve were classmates at the Boulder Potters Guild. Julie’s passion for clay subsequently led her to create her own home studio in Longmont, where she applies her hand-building skills and sense of whimsy to making delightful decorative and functional pieces.

Now a Guild member and a teacher there, Julie says “I am drawn to texture and find my roots coming through in my work. I am inspired by nature and by the patterns of repetition: the simplicity of a house, the design formed by bicycle gears, the delicate texture in a leaf, the rolling rocks in a rambling stone wall, and the ridges on a sea turtle’s shell.”

This year, Julie will bring us her holiday ornaments, eyeglass stands, mats, and cloth rope-coiled bowls.

Gelsomina (Gelsey) Malferrari grew up in Boulder and Italy, daughter to artisan parents.  She encountered willow basketry in the canyons of southern Utah over ten years ago, which started a passion for the craft that has grown ever since.  She harvests most of her materials in the winter around Boulder County, sorting and curing them for summer time weaving. Crafting beautiful, strong baskets from willow requires skill, strength and patience, and willow baskets can last a lifetime, or longer.

Gelsomina lives on a 20 acre homestead with her husband and two children. She is also one of the founders of the Laughing Coyote Project, a non-profit dedicated to teaching primitive and ancestral living skills. She teaches workshops through Laughing Coyote and Dharma’s Garden.

Linda loves color! And she loves the creative process of making things from yarn or cloth. She started out in fiber arts as a weaver, but expanded into other forms as well, and is now also an accomplished quilter. This is her second year making items for our Holiday Gift Market, and has brought her popular heat-insulated quilted cotton potholders, along with her new placemats.

Linda has been an active member and past president of the Handweaver’s Guild of Boulder for many years, with galleries throughout Colorado showing her work.

Our dear friend Lynn Mattingly is a renowned fiber artist and has been practicing and teaching quilting for decades.  An exceptional sense of color-combining, a fabulous collection of fabrics and a mastery of design and craftsmanship combine to make Lynn’s work really special. Sturdy and machine-washable, they are not only gorgeous but also practical.

This year we offer her Small Quilts and Table-Runners. Lynn lives just over the hills in Paonia, CO.

Living outside of Boulder and inspired by the great beauty of Colorado and its diverse landscapes, accomplished painter Peter Buwalda’s depictions of trees, flowers and pollinators go beyond simple documentation. Peter composes complex imagery that uses nature to evoke emotional responses such as hope and perseverance while maintaining accuracy. His art is collected worldwide and is quickly gaining acclaim in the Rocky Mountain area. Many of his honeybee images are on permanent exhibit in the National Agriculture Museum in Ottawa, Canada. Peter offers fine art greeting cards and original paintings, and may still have some prints available.

Artisan Renée McDougall of Longmont became interested in crafting with glass while working at the Stained Glass Supply Company.  She works mostly in fused glass, a process that can take up to 11 hours from start to finish. Renée uses her home studio for crafting many different glass pieces, from jewelry to bowls, trays and hanging art.

 We think her cast glass hanging Green Man will make a lovely addition to any gardener’s window or porch! And this year, she’s added a female wood-spirit face to join him.

Sustainable Threads is an exclusively fair trade, eco-focused company promoting handmade lifestyle products, carefully co-designed with their artisan partners in India and assuring them a living wage from their craft. Traditional art techniques are used to craft a collection with a modern sensibility.

Their kitchen towels are hand block-printed with non-toxic dyes on heavy weight, highly absorbent Kora unbleached/unprocessed cotton fabric. The geometric patterns are as perfect for modern minimalist settings as they are for traditional and eclectic kitchens. We are also carrying their handwoven, indigo-dyed placemats.

Sondra’s beautiful pressed-flower botanical cards and ornaments are a true delight and will be treasured for years!  Sondra also brings us her original hand-knitted hats, headbands, and faux-fur scarves, featured in our Personal Adornment section.

We are fortunate that Theresa Haberkorn, woodcut printmaker, has made Boulder her home for more than two decades.  Her masterful woodcut prints are found in exhibits and collections nation-wide, and she teaches her artform as well.  Theresa brings her art to household items as well, hand-crafting a charming wall calendar, hand-bound journals, and an assortment of cards.

To find out more about the process of woodcut printing, visit Theresa Haberkorn Artist | Printmaker | Designer.

Our friends Thea Tenenbaum and Raffaele Malferrari have for many years been well known around Boulder and beyond for their charming tradition-based Italian majolica pottery. Since Thea’s sad passing, Raffaele and their daughter Gelsey have been working together in the studio to continue the family’s tradition.

Majolica is a process requiring multiple firings and great skill with the paintbrush. Their exquisitely detailed mugs depicting local animals, birds and insects, and tradition-inspired abstract designs will be treasured by anyone lucky enough to receive them!

Our scented and poured candles are from Longmont resident Kym Terribile, who started making candles when she found out that the candles she was burning were full of toxic chemicals.

Wax Crescent candles are made with pure ingredients: US-grown soy wax, scented with phthalate-free fragrance oils and high-quality essential oils, and the wicks are lead-free, zinc-free cotton. The recyclable glass jars are adorned with simple, attractive labels. If lighting a candle signifies creating a sacred space for yourself, why would you settle for less?

We’ve chosen six of Wax Crescent’s unique natural fragrances we prefer for the autumn and winter months: Black Fig & Bergamot, Rosemary & Cedar, Lavender & Rosemary, White Birch & Eucalyptus, Matcha & Lemongrass, and Vetiver & Fig.