Greetings!

It is my deep, dark pleasure to announce the annual Online Hallowe'en Artists' Studio Tour! This is my "treat" to you all, a special way to celebrate my favorite season, share some exceptional art by artists I personally admire and raise money for animal charities. With this blog, I hope to keep you up-to-date with proceedings and progress as we approach the yearly "launch" on October 1st!



Thursday, October 24, 2013

Hi all!
I just spent the past hour promoting us on Every group I am in on Facebook, Etsy and Linkedin...Let's get those stats moving UP!!!!!!!!!! I also asked my cousin who runs the Walkill River School in New York to post for us, so keep your fingers crossed!
Hi,
I've had a great time enjoying everyone's Wonderful art pieces for the tour.  If anyone could give me some advice or tips on improving my website, I'd appreciate it.  Being new to all of this, I am not sure if I have too much, if my site loads too slow, due to all the pages, etc... any suggestions or advice, comments are welcome! Thanks to all for the great touring of some Bootiful Creations! It's been fun looking!
Deana

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Glorious Hallowe'en display!


I just wanted to share with you the current display in our library which includes Diana Ussery's art!  Last year Diana created the black bat (on the left of the paper maché pumpkin) for our Online Hallowe'en Tour and, unknown to me, my sister purchased the bat and later gave it to me for Xmas!  Wow!  I was delighted and surprised!  So this year I wanted to show him off and so there he is, for all to see. 
In fact the paper maché pumpkin was created under Tammi Beaulieu's excellent tutelage! 

And the mini fabric pumpkins?  They are for sale, see my studio page!

The display is called "Get Ready for Hallowe'en" with three craft ideas:  paper maché, card making and fabric pumpkins. 

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Statistics: let's break last year's record!

 
Happy October indeed!  I hope you've been enjoying a wonder-filled time preparing for the big day!  Only 12 sleeps until Hallowe'en!
 
Our tour is going very well, here are the latest statistics (courtesy of statcounter.com):

 
We've had 776 unique visitors for the period of September 27th up till today, with 24 sales.  We seem to have plateaued, though, so let's push for another run of great sales!  Please do use your physical and virtual connections to let the world know about the tour and the work we're doing to raise money for our animal friends! 
 
Yesterday we were in Elora and left bookmarks and posters at the Visitors' Center, the public library and a wonderful little store called Seasons & Cinnamon which had a Hallowe'en assortment of treats! 
 
What a lovely day we had, enjoying the Twilight Zoo which is scattered all about town and walking the gorge trail where we came across a barn with an ominous "Walking Dead" type warning and a beautiful ruin of a former industrial or mill building (the photo on the left looks a bit like a face, don't you think?). 

 
This photo below is from the Culture Days event held here on September 28th, where I set out this table to let people know about our tour.  Simple and effective. 
 
Please do share our tour's address with your buddies, friends, colleagues, collectors, strangers, zombies that still have credit cards... and let's beat last year's record of 2071 visitors and 38 sales!  Yeah!  Boo!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

I added a couple of new items today to kick off the trick or treating.
Best wishes to everyone for raising money for our animal friends!
I am donating 20% of my sales to the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center
http://www.wolfeducation.org
I grew up just a couple of miles from where the center is. 



Crreeeaaakkkk! The gates open!


Happy October 1st! 

Our tour is officially open, come and trick or treat with us!!!  We've already enjoyed a phenomenal success, with 6 sales including the 2 incredibly sweet soft sculpture pieces by Kelly Dauterman pictured in her welcoming photo:
 
Grue and Willies have both found their forever homes, with $74 combined going to the charity Kelly selected:  Shark Trust !  Yes, these lovelies are supporting the much-misunderstood sharks, many species suffering terrible losses due to over-fishing and pollution. 
 
 
And sharks are essential to the health of our oceans!

these 2 panels are from the book Sharks by David Burnie