Holiday Gift Market

Alexis’ bold prints are graphic standouts that grabbed our attention at the Art Student League of Denver’s ‘Summer Art Fair’ this year. Her images are beautifully composed, inspired by Colorado scenery, wildflowers, and landmarks, and by the long tradition of travel posters.

Alexis says “Since childhood I have had a desire to become an artist. And here I finally am – middle aged woman – mom, on her way to getting her BFA. You’re never too old! Just now it takes a little more brain power and a lot more coffee. Life is too short for all the art practices I would love to explore!” Her 11×14” posters are digitally printed on heavy stock and can be displayed with or without frames.

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 Sunday, December 18th. 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, which will hold its 2022 Fiber Art Show & Sale from November 2-6 at the Boulder County Fairgrounds.

This year, in addition to her popular collaged fabric cards and felted flower pins, Amy has designed and block-printed some gorgeous, nature-inspired tea-towels, and created Mending/Darning Kits, and sets of local mountain photo 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 the 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 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!

Kelly Shanafelt is a mosaic artist in Boulder creating glass mosaics. Trained as a professional musician, she has played viola in the Colorado Symphony for 35 years. But once she got started making things with her hands, she found she couldn’t stop making art, and finds it at once meditative, joyful, and stimulating.

The intricate, bright, sparkling ornaments Kelly has made for us will light up your holiday décor, looking great on your tree or in a window!

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, and napkins. 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.

We are very happy to include some of Deborah Hager’s work for the first time this year in our holiday market. Her beautiful and expert work is in galleries around the state and beyond. Deborah Hager is an accomplished potter living and working in Divide, CO. With a degree in fine arts, she began working as a potter at the famed Van Briggle Pottery Co. in Old Colorado City. When that company was forced to downsize, Deborah opened her own studio, Clay by Nature, where she makes beautiful pottery inspired by the natural world around her and informed by the philosophy expounded and manifested by the Arts & Crafts movement of the early 20^th century. She makes all of her own glazes, formulating and testing them until they produce the complex, dynamic colors she loves to work with. Her high-fire wares are food safe, microwave and dishwasher safe.

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! 

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!

Glenne is a longtime fiber artist and member of both Rocky Mt. and Boulder Handweaver’s Guilds. She is a master of her fiber crafts, and has developed lines of unique hand-painted, reversible canvas placemats and table-runners (also zipper bags, shoulder bags and tote bags in our Personal Adornment section), and richly colored square trivets that are first knitted, then wet-felted, as well as colorful felt balls for use in your dryer or as décor.

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 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.

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 also bring us her holiday ornaments, eyeglass stands, and cloth rope-coiled bowls.