The new year is here! 2024 was a busy year with the growth of my online holiday gift shop (recently renamed in 2025 to "Clock & Quill"). What started out a few years ago as an online seasonal "pop-up shop" quickly transformed into a year-round selection of seasonal art pieces and signed books created by myself, as well as intriguing decorations from other brands!
I'll admit, I wasn't quite ready for all the love and support everyone showed my shop last year, and quickly found myself buried in more orders than I had expected, and "out of stock requests" for many sold out items (an incredibly wonderful 'problem' to have)! I can't tell you how grateful I am to everyone that supported my shop last year & what it has meant to me, as I've always dreamed of having a gift shop, and of selling my art.
With 2024's shop's busy (and maybe slightly unprepared) experience fresh in my mind, I have many plans and ideas for this upcoming year, and the first phase of 'new' for 2025 is a complete redesign of the Clock & Quill shop pages!
This new design offers easier browsing, allowing the ability to browse by season - each with festive coloring & newly designed banners, as well as by category under each season too!
If you can believe it, I've already started working on creating pieces for the 2025 Halloween Collection! The past few years the collection has sold out well before the season arrives, and each year I try to make just a few more pieces to offer more creations to those who want to add them to their Halloween collections.
So far this year, I've created these festive little chenille pumpkin figures,
And finally finished this art piece (below) that I actually started crafting last year!
I knew when I started working on this piece that it was going to take quite some time to finish, and during the recording season (May - Dec), I just didn't have the time to dedicate to making it how I wanted to. But I was so excited to pick the project back up after the busy season settled into these more relaxed winter months!
Most recently, this (at the time I'm writing this post) is my newest Halloween decoration - a vintage inspired painted paper mache Halloween pumpkin! The style of this was inspired by the pumpkin figures on antique Halloween postcards. But I added a few embellishments of my own too!
Aside from Halloween, I've also been crafting just a few Easter & Valentines items as seen below. You can check out all the new items for Valentine's and Spring under this new shop section here!
Around the house, I almost have all of the Christmas decorations put away (Except for the HP Christmas tree), and have a few new things I've changed, including the bedset in our main bedroom after a red colored electric blanket transferred onto our quilt and left our white bedspread pink. This was unexpected, but lead to a fun change in bedding that is very soft, neutral, and cozy - and allowed me to build a new bedset around a 10ft blanket my brother crocheted me for Christmas!
With that, I wish you all a wonderful start of this new year & hope it finds you full of hope, happiness, joy, and inspiration!