Artist Spotlight: Part One Hundred and Eight

You've met this artist, Kris, here before, here, here, here, and again here, when I showed you what I myself have gotten from her!

She's still at it, though, using her talent, creating, and making her wares available to all of us for purchase!  Check 'em out...

What you can find in Reflections:

There are paintings now!

And pendants!

What you can find in Lisianblue:

How sweet is that snuggle bunny?

For more, follow her on Twitter or her blog.

Artist Spotlight: Part Ninety-One

You've met the talented Kris here before, but now she's got two shops at Handmade Artists!  The one from which I've shopped is Reflections, where she's got all her wonderful glasswork, ornaments, paperweights, wind chimes, vases, suncatchers, candle holders, and crazy amazing art.

Getting ready for Valentine's Day!

 

I love this tetrahedron!  I have one like it, but this is beautiful.  They're just so fun to look at and definitely a conversation piece for your desk.

I just love these wind chimes! 

The other is lisianblue, where she makes available her amazing knitted and crocheted items, quilts, and some other amazing things.

How cute is this snake?  It's a necklace, a toy, a lariat... all at once!

This piece, quilted, beaded, and collaged, just absolutely blows me away.

To keep up with Kris, be sure to follow her blog.  Never know what she'll create next!

My Handmade Holidays

I did a lot of creating this season.  A lot.  I'm tired, but still truckin' along.

I suppose I should start with Chanukah, which also happened to pretty much coincide with one nephew's birthday, so I include the birthday in this post too.

Both nephews, for Chanukah and Christmas, got these cute magnetic fishing games I made.

Eric helped too; he cut down the dowels for me to make the fishing poles!

And I knitted each one a fish like this one.

But not all the crafts were mine, and I really should back up.  First, there was one gift exchange with a group, and for my recipient, in addition to giving her my own candles, soap, and one of my washcloths, I gave her a beautiful bear ornament from Reflections, like this one.

And Kris, the shop owner, was so wonderful that she sent one for our tree too!

And no, we don't have a fake white tree, we get the real thing from the local EMS, generally.  It just doesn't show up as well on the dark green in a photo, so that's Kris' shop photo.  Here's how it looks in our house:

I also gave the same person this cool hot/cold pack in a racing fabric from Lil' Bit Sassy.  My recipient's favorite sport is NASCAR, after all.

Then in another exchange, in addition to one of our bath salts and one of our candles, I gave my recipient these incense sticks from Delightful Scents.

My office is also REALLY big on Christmas, so we had all sorts of gift exchanges.  For my boss, I got this terrific print of a watercolor painting, which I then framed for her.  It was from StartsArts.

It looks even more amazing in person, and Eric and I kind of want one for ourselves too.  The colors are so bright and vivid!

For the associate with whom I also work, I got this really pretty hanging tealight holder from Reflections.  Fall is her favorite season, so I thought it was perfect.

And for our office white elephant exchange, I got this awesome mug from River Rock Arts, and gave it with some homemade chocolates and a Dunkin Donuts gift card.

That mug is called "oversized" in the description, but believe me when I tell you it's HUGE and gorgeous, and I will own some at some point!

And to everyone in the office, I gave handmade snowman lollipops.  With 14 people in the office and three pops per person, 42 pops took me quite a while to do.  I admire chocolatiers, for sure.  But at the end, everyone got one dark chocolate, one milk chocolate, and one white chocolate pop.

For each other, Eric got me some amazing teas and other stuff, and I got him a dehydrator and some books and things.  It was a great Chanukah and Christmas all around!

Shared with:

It's been a while...

... since I talked about the Handmade Artists Forum & Handmade Artists Shop.  It's still going strong, stronger than ever, in fact, so if you haven't checked it out, you really should take a look.  The shop is growing by the day with talented vendors.  If you're serious about supporting handmade, this is a great place to shop, especially now for the holidays.  The place is committed to 100% handmade wares, no mass-produced, no resellers, and they're serious about keeping out the riffraff.

Speaking of the holidays, one of the members made this terrific video to give you a sampling of what you might find if you wanted to start in on your shopping - don't forget, Chanukah is early this year!

And if you're an artisan, crafter, artist, or creator yourself, you really should join and visit the forum.  HAF is committed to promoting all handmade, so whether you sell on HA or any other site doesn't actually matter.  You can find lively discussion, support, a cheering section for your creations, constructive criticism, creating assistance and instruction, and even photos of the members' pets!

You know I'm incapable of leaving you without photos, so here are some of the things recently posted in the forum.

And for good measure, a HAF pet!