Art & Home Accessories

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.

We love using Khala cloths, the original Beeswax Wraps in the US. They are the creation of Asa and Tamar McKee, who now reside in Boulder, where they produce their environmentally responsible alternatives to plastic wrap and plastic bags. Khala Cloths can be used to cover and seal a bowl of left-overs, and make the best wrapping for keeping cheeses, breads and vegetables fresh longer.

Every Khala Cloth comes in zero waste packaging and the cloth used is organic cotton and hemp grown in North America – no bleaching, no chemicals!  Khala Cloths will have a long life (several years) when properly cared for.

As a child, Tina Hoffer discovered a passion for woodworking by watching her dad in his own shop. After moving to Colorado in 1990, she started a family and turned her garage into a wood shop where she could escape and could explore the beauty of woodworking.

Using a variety of woods, domestic, exotic, and reclaimed, in her Lafayette workshop, Tina creates a wide range of functional works of art.  She has refined her craft and focuses now on smaller creations.  Natural-edge cutting boards and hand-carved kitchen utensils are among her specialties. They are functional, beautifully designed and crafted and a joy to use, to hold, and to behold.

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 first year making items for our Holiday Gift Market, and has brought her popular heat-insulated quilted cotton potholders.

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.

Lois Edgar is a longtime member of the Boulder Potters Guild. She has been exploring techniques with clay for many years and has developed a style that is both earthy and charming. Many of her pieces are embellished with her delightful paintings of chickadees, owls, quail, horses, and other birds and wildlife.

This year we feature her embossed white paper ornaments. 

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. This is the last year Peter is making prints of his work.

Browse through Peter’s final print collection that, along with honeybees, also includes his “Colorado Wildflowers #1” set and his new limited signed “Shelterwood” series! You can also find 5×7 fine art greeting cards & sets, or pick up a gold leaf journal set with his 2022 Queen Bee Design.

Our friend Fred Hall is a dedicated ‘rockhound’, with a special passion for petrified wood and meteorites. His expeditions in Utah have yielded some wonderful specimens from the Jurassic era, including segments in which the exterior bark texture has been preserved, and the interiors have been replaced with vividly multicolored agate.

Fred will also be bringing other beautiful mineral specimens from his treasure-trove! Each piece comes with an identification tag.

We met Nicole at an art festival several years ago, where her work stood out as gems of elegant, practical, original design and superb crafting. Working on the wheel, she often alters her pieces by removing areas of clay to create forms with movement and flowing lines. Her shapes and surface decoration are contemporary and playful, and her high-fired porcelain pieces this year feature playful patterns, as well as some new shapes.

Nicole lives and works in the lovely mountain town of La Veta, CO, where she also founded a gallery, and she has taught art since 2006 at CO State University in Pueblo. For three years Nicole traveled with a team of ceramic artists to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to teach pottery-making skills to employees of an art-based, socially conscious business called Papillion Enterpises.  Her high-fired porcelain bowls, mugs, herb-strippers, etc. are durable, dishwasher and microwave safe and a delight to see and to use!

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 and hanging art.

We think her cast glass hanging Green Man will make a lovely addition to any gardener’s window or porch!

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 Gelsie 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!

These colorful nylon hammocks and packs are Boulder-designed, fair-trade produced and thoughtfully designed to be incredibly comfortable and durable, holding up to 400 pounds. They come in sizes to serve as everything from a hanging chair or gear-holder to a perfect bed for two. They’re also easy to clean, last for many years, and scrunch down into a little-bitty stuff-sack for easy, lightweight travel. And Trek Light hammocks are not just for lounging and snuggling. Many customers have found that TL hammocks gave them their first sound sleep without back pain in years. They then ditched their mattresses (of all kinds) and have slept in heavenly peace ever since!

The Bindle Pack emerges from its really tiny, attached stuff-sack to serve as the perfect daypack once you’ve set up your base camp. Or around town! Eve keeps hers in the glove compartment and pops her purse, jacket, and water bottle into the pack for impromptu hikes.

Our first-ever scented and poured candles are from Longmont resident Kym Terribile, who started making candles a few years ago 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 four of Wax Crescent’s unique natural fragrances we prefer for the autumn and winter months: Rosemary & Cedar, Lavender & Rosemary, White Birch & Eucalyptus, and Vetiver & Fig.

We’d been looking for some finely handcrafted small wood products for the home, at affordable prices, and finally found Wooden Images. Located in Missoula MT, the workshop was founded in 1980 in John Bakula’s garage. In 1981 his brother Mark joined him, and they’ve been designing and creating intricately patterned items that are original, functional and beautiful since then.

“We pride ourselves on meticulous craftsmanship and attention to detail and feel it shows in the beauty and durability of each piece we make. There are no computers doing any of the work, just two guys, with imagination and decades of experience, and some power tools.”

The pieces we will feature this year include some great gift items –  business card holders (pictured left), beautiful feather-weight earrings, and hardwood hair barrettes.

We are delighted to add Wymzy ceramics to our holiday market offerings this year! Melissa Harvey has been a potter for forty years in the Denver area, working from her home studio. Her white stoneware pieces are wheel-thrown and altered, decorated with her colorful patterns in underglazes, then covered with a clear glaze. She loves to make functional pottery, items you can use, that will add pleasure to your everyday experiences at home.

Melissa has brought us mugs, bud vases, small bowls and trays, oil cruets, and a couple of berry bowls.

Zink Metal Art is the collaborative effort of Charlotte and Ben Zink, who have made their whimsical and flowing designs of metal for home and garden for the past 20 years in Berthoud, CO.

Their steel garden sculptures are graceful, original, very easy to install, and affordable, and similar designs are available as smaller garden ornaments, indoor wall-pieces and as pendants on necklaces. All make great gifts!