Chagrin Falls Avant-Garde Art & Craft Shows: December 2019

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Time to Get Festive in Chagrin Falls!

Meet R Squared Limited Edition...
My husband and I live in Strongsville, Oh. My day job is in banking and crafts and beading fill much of my free time. I have been crafting for my entire life and have been beading seriously for about eight to nine years. My mom was crafty so we always had something around to work on.

My inspiration comes from lots of places - things I see, other crafters, books, videos, nature, previous crafts. I am constantly learning - changes what techniques I use. I very much enjoyed the journey of learning. I very much enjoy teaching - sharing my knowledge and experience and especially showing people the right way, and the wrong way to do some of the techniques. I share my experimenting and 'fails'!!

Determining what to make comes from various influences. I hate getting stale so I am constantly researching and reading. Once I know what I want to make I begin to select materials. Then I just go for it. This is my seventh or eight Avant-Garde show and I am super excited to return!

Meet Heidi Page of My Caterpillar Wings...

Like most of us, I am so many different people at once! I am joyfully married to my husband of 14 years and we have two incredible daughters with whom I try to spend meaningful time (while I still can!). I spent a couple of years doing musical theater with our 12 year old daughter and this year I am a Girl Scout with our 9 year old. I spend my days at Case Western Reserve University where I was once a research scientist and now work on the compliance and administrative side in support of our researchers. I love to be outside, to read and to be at the bottom of a snuggle pile. I would be remiss, and likely disowned, if I did not mention how much I enjoy the newest addition to the family, our Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Sebastian.

I made hemp and beaded jewelry in my younger years but this, the intention and energy jewelry, I have only been making for about 6 months and selling it for even less time. My own spiritual and emotional needs drew me back to meditation first, then working with healing stones and creating energy and intention bracelets second. I made a few bracelets for myself out of healing stones and it wasn't long before I started to hear from others, "That's really cool, I need one of those!" Which evolved into, "Do you sell these?" I was honestly surprised others wanted to buy what I created! It is more than putting pieces together to create a pretty bracelet and I think that is the draw. I think it is less about talent and more about the care I put into these. Or maybe the care is my talent? I often cleanse my space with a smudge stick before I begin to work. I might lay out a crystal or two to help me focus my thoughts and energy on what I want to create, and everything I make is made thoughtfully, with intention and cleansed through smudging before being given to my customer or taken to a show. Every bracelet comes with a card explaining the stones used, numerical significance, if any, and the intention that created it. I suspect that part is more the talent than stringing beads?

People inspire me. I try to hear and internalize the problems and concerns of the people around me, or those that are so common we all cope with. I want to help alleviate those problems for people. I want to provide aides and tools to overcome mountains, to help people persevere, to grow, to love ourselves and others, to evolve into the best of ourselves. The message of my work is that none of us are done yet. We are all still evolving and we have a say in how that goes. Listen to your inner voice (the kind one!) and the Universe and hear what they are telling you, discover what you need and go get it so you can be the best of yourself.

Meet Lisa Wilson of Nectar of the Vine...

We are a family owned & operated business for over 14 years now with our wine slushy mixes. We take great care to offer a wonderful product with a great deal of selection of flavors and options of how to make our mixes. Our favorite motto is spike it how you like it from wine to moonshine! Though we have done this for fourteen years, this is our first Avant-Garde show.

We love being able to offer our customers a great tasting product & seeing what joy it brings to them. Getting to travel to different festivals and shows & experiencing the people & the surrounding things to do in that area is something we love about our craft.

In five years, hopefully we are growing the company to the best it can be.The message behind out work is to sit back & enjoy life and relax with your friends & family with a great wine slushy or a warm wine cocktail.

Meet Erica and Hope of Decade's Dream Soap...

We are a mom (Hope) and daughter (Erica) partnership. We both have a wide variety of interests and love spending time creating, talking, and laughing. When not soaping together, Hope cares for her aging mom and Erica works as a digital marketer as well as a fitness coach.

We’ve been making soap together regularly for about two and a half years. Initially, Hope took a class on how to make soap around the time her youngest of three children was leaving home. Erica, always curious and eager to learn, thought making soap with her mom was a stellar idea. As making soap is practical as well as fun, we’ve stuck with it. We’d like to believe that we infuse our soap with our care and creativity when making each batch.

Hope loves color, wants to know how things are constructed (fabric, usually), and always wants to rearrange (furniture, appliances, you-name-it) and make things look beautiful while retaining or improving their functionality.

Erica loves to build things (both digitally and physically). She likes to understand how things work and then apply that knowledge to improve her part of the process. Logic and intuition play a part in how she creates, with attention to detail being an asset with both artistic and technical endeavors.

We believe that our products should be practical and beautiful. Our soap is meant to be used, and, while it’s a consumable item, it’s also something that adds joy to the sometimes mundane experience of washing.

This will be our first show with Avant-Garde and we’re very excited to participate as a vendor!

2019 Chagrin Falls Winter Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show

Saturday & Sunday, December 14 & 15, 2019

Saturday - 10:00am-5:00pm

Sunday- 11:00am-5:00pm

Federated Church Family Life Center

16349 Chillicothe Rd.

Chagrin Falls, OH 44023

For more information, contact Becki Silverstein, Event Coordinator at Becki@ag-shows.com

Visit us on:

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

PINTEREST

INSTAGRAM

LINKEDIN

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Chagrin Falls, Meet Your Vendors!

Meet Josh Marinelli of J. Marinelli Art...

A little more than a year ago (last summer), I turned my attention to some paintings I had created throughout my past. A neighbor happened to stop by as I was unpacking them and she was immediately struck and walked away with 3! My first sale! After that, I decided to not turn away from this thing that was always in me but never allowed to develop. So I’ve been painting regularly for a little more than a year. However the first ‘discovery’ came 20 years ago.

I do not have any formal artistic training or background! I earned a MA in Eng.Lit from John Carroll. And taught Eng. Comp at many colleges in three different states over the course of 20 years.

Over this past year, 2 plywood pieces and a large plywood commissioned piece found homes with individuals that connected somehow to them. It’s still absolutely awesome to think about: That something I made is hanging in someone’s home/office. Even just being in these AG shows is still kinda scary. I’ve only been present in 1 so far!

The colors that appear in my work usually come from natural things. The sky and clouds, a Red Maple tree across the street, trees in general. And my ‘subjects’ are ideas, senses, feelings, and motion itself, especially patterns. I’m drawn to working on wood surfaces like plywood and even unfinished “chunks” of logs.

I’m a very deliberative worker and spend a lot of time visualizing. I think I use the oil paint differently then usual also because of the nature of wood.

Beside continue to make things and develop as an artist, my goals are quite undefined. Specifically though, I am interested in garnering another/more commissioned work. The one I did this past year ( called Transition), was/is one of my best accomplishments in life period!

Meet Patricia Dennison of Palmer Place Fine Teas...

My name is Patricia Dennison & I am the owner of Palmer Place Fine Teas. I am of Scottish ancestry, and grew up drinking tea. I have many fond memories of drinking tea with my Scottish grandmother. Tea time then was a gathering of my mom, sister, aunts & cousins. We shared many laughs & cups of strong black tea with milk & sugar. To this day, when I have a strong black cup of tea it takes me back to my childhood. The name Palmer Place Fine Teas is derived from No. 10 Palmer Place Tea Room. I owed this tea room in the 2010's. Desiring to focus on tea education, I closed the restaurant and stayed in the tea business.

As a Tea Sommelier, it is my mission to educate the consumer about the different types of tea & their flavor profiles. I also realize that many consumers do not know how to brew tea properly. It is my goal to teach customers tea brewing techniques that will produce the most flavorful and enjoyable cup.

As part of my tea certification programs I was required to taste hundreds of different teas and take notes on each tea. Soon I was able to identify different teas by their taste & identify their origin. I have learned how to prepare each type of tea for optimal flavor, and create blends because of my knowledge of the different flavor profiles.

The key to blending and flavoring tea is not only knowing how the tea tastes, but what the blending components taste like as well. Therefore, when I create a new blend, I will taste the blending components brewed separately from the tea, then begin combining. Much of the initial process is trial & error. Often it takes 4-6 attempts to come up with a blend that is pleasing to many different palates.

I will continue my on line presence http://www.palmerplacetea.com, I will also continue to attend shows and festivals throughout Northeastern Ohio. There are so many shows that often I cannot be two places at once, so my goal is to have a staff so that Palmer Place Tea can be represented at numerous venues. I would also like to have my teas represented in more businesses throughout Northeastern Ohio.

here are many tea purveyors out there, but not all suppliers are knowledgeable about their product. They merely purchase their tea from a wholesaler and re-package it with their name. When you purchase Palmer Place Fine Teas, you will know that your teas come from only reputable, trusted, FDA approved sources that have been carefully selected at the World Tea Expo. In addition, many of my tea blends are proprietary to Palmer Place Fine Teas and cannot be found anywhere else.

Meet Lina ElRichani of MsCotti’s Biscotti & Scones...
MsCotti’s Biscotti & Scones is a family run bakery that specializes in the “softer” biscotti and scones. We are Cleveland’s premier “softer” biscotti, made from scratch bakery. My husband and I work really hard to show our love and kindness to the world, by serving our customers the highest quality baked goods they have ever had! We have been baking our gourmet “softer” biscotti & scones since 2004. We started subleasing in a very small facility and have expanded into a 4500 sf commercial facility.

My husband’s family has been baking for many generations. Being the youngest of eight siblings, he learned at an early age the tricks of being a great and innovative baker. We are inspired by our loyal customers to expand our product line to include over 25 different “softer” biscotti flavors and 9 scone flavors. We love trying new flavors and even expanded to include Gluten Free Biscotti and Cookies!

In five years we hope to continue to expand or product line and to be known as the leading “softer” biscotti distributor throughout the county.

We don’t just serve our customer’s the “softest” biscotti and scones they have ever had, this husband and wife couple strives to leave an impression and spread a little love and joy to everyone we see!