Holiday Gift Market

Our friend Clark has turned what used to be a family hobby into a full-time business. In his Longmont studio, he makes a delightful cast beeswax candles that come in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes, including a number of designs that are cast in antique and modern European candle molds. In addition, we are offering Amber Lights hand-dipped beeswax taper candles and Hanukkah candles.

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

Hanukkah begins Wednesday, December 25th. 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.

Amethyst Clusters are said to calm the mind, to deepen spiritual connection, and even to strengthen the immune system. They are often used in Feng Shui to clear negative emotions. We think these hand-selected clusters look great on a windowsill among houseplants!

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.  This year, she’s offering Vintage Bobbin Ornaments, and gift cards.

We are very excited to feature Marie Foucault-Phipps’ stunning, intriguing, and elegant glass tableware again!  When I came upon her work, I found it entirely unlike anything I had seen before. Using a technique that dates as far back as 9th century Turkey, Marie paints her
original designs with ‘Silver Stain’ (silver oxide) on clear glass pieces. They are then fired in a kiln and emerge with a rich and exciting color palette ranging from yellows, golds, and browns to deep coppery oranges, and molten reds!  She describes it as “a wild medium, not reliable, and always surprising” and says she enjoys “exploiting its freedom”.  You will love her tableware and other pieces!

Marie studied Stained Glass Conservation in Paris and became an accomplished conservator of historical stained-glass art across France and the U.S., where she relocated to Colorado in 1984. An accomplished glass painter, Marie freelanced for other studios while working on her own exhibition glass. She has exhibited around the world with the Women’s International Glass Workshop to places such as Japan, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Wales, France, and Golden, Colorado!

Cobalt Creations’ Debe Frazer is a mom to 5 boys, and stumbled into glass art quite by accident while exploring creative outlets with her youngest. She fell in love with the medium by starting with one very small kiln and now has over 5 — including a life-size one! Her glass designs are handcrafted with layers of art glass in a vibrant array of colors. Each piece is cut and constructed by hand and kiln fired multiple times.

Courtney Puig Thompson is a Fort Collins ceramicist and photographer. Courtney is a Cuban American artist who was raised in southwest Louisiana and northern Colorado. In her twenties and thirties she made her home on two islands – New York City and Kauai. “Chasing unique glaze results and firing in different kilns environments excites me. With Ceramic art there is so much to explore and many paths to pursue. At the Boulder Potter’s Guild I experiment with Salt, Soda, in Heavy Reduction, and Oxidation environments.”

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.

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 were struck by her flowing, stylized and poetic depictions of the natural world. We are delighted to offer Erin’s cards, prints, and original paintings again this year!

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, and cloth rope-coiled coasters, mats and bowls.

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.

Kaley Alie is a Colorado acrylic artist creating cheerfully bright art with intentional imperfections. She is a believer in art that will make you smile. Unexpected colors, bold brushstrokes, animal personalities, and the whimsy of nature make her happy and inspire her to paint. She has prints, cards and calendars for us.

Laura Bryant is a Colorado fiber artist. Her rope and fabric bowls, baskets and artworks are all one-of-a-kind machine sewn artworks. She elevates simple recycled materials into layers like paint on a canvas.  The threads, fabrics and ribbons in various widths and stitches add a painterly element to works that could have merely utilitarian.

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. She has brought her popular heat-insulated quilted cotton potholders, along with her new placemats to our Holiday Market.

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.

Photographer Gretchen Steinbruek’s work creating art from natural subjects is so stunning, we had to bring it to you this year! These images, printed on glass, have an inner glow and the definition of the foreground subjects is remarkable.

Nicole Copel is a Colorado artist working out of Pinon Hill Clay Studios in LaVeta,  where she creates one-of-a-kind works of art. 

EFFERVESCENCE is characterized by bright colors and round shapes against a white porcelain clay surface. This playful series adds a little buoyancy to a time when it is all too easy to be dragged down by the seriousness and challenges of being human. My hope is that the work brings levity to the people that live with it.

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 again this year, she’s adding a female wood-spirit face to join him.

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.

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 placemats and richly colored handwoven napkins.

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, and an assortment of cards.

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

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?