Today's Gazette

 Today's Gazette featured a very nice full page, color article about Things With Wings!  We had a great time visiting with Molly Rossiter from the Gazette and were thrilled that she wanted to learn more about our new home decor line with Demdaco called "This Thing Called Family."  To see pictures of our entire line, click here.  

You can actually read the article by clicking on the pictures below several times to enlarge!

Can't read the teeny tiny words?  Click on the pictures several times to make them bigger.

After the Big Day

 Now that the "big day" is over with, I can share some special orders I had the privilege of doing.  I LOVE being a part of meaningful gift giving!  Makes my hearts full!

For some wonderful Grandmas and Mothers

Family home pieces

Family trees

There are a few more out there I just didn't have the time to photograph or that haven't been given yet.

We hope you all had a good, relaxing Christmas and that you're all recovering nicely!  We're having a great time here with a nice long visit from our youngest winger.  We've been playing games, visiting, laughing, and eating way too much.

We're anxious for the new year to begin.  You all know why!  What do you think your 2011will look like?

Do you all make new years resolutions? 

Merry Christmas!

Teacher gifts all lined up

We are so thankful for all of you during this holiday season!  But we are thankful for all of you all the year through too!  This year has been a great adventure for us with our artwork and we've loved every minute of it.  We appreciate all of the encouragement and feedback you've given us and how excited you all have been to share in our joy.  We hope your Christmas is full of family, friends, fun, peace and joy as you celebrate Jesus and all he's done for you! 

We know that for some of you this past year has been challenging and heartbreaking in ways that we can't even imagine.  And Christmas time seems to only magnify the pain.  Just know that we feel that same longing for heaven that you do.  I've been sorting through old papers and memorabilia recently (not the best time of year for that) which brings back the sharpness of old losses.  It's astounding to me that a word or image can take you right back there so easily.  We Wingers like to say that Christmas isn't really Christmas until you've had your Christmas cry.  Many of those tears are shed for the longing we have to be reunited with our dad who passed suddenly in 1997, and for the babies we never got to hold.  It's amazing that even in our tears there is hope - and we can't wait for the day when there will be no more tears and we will be reunited!  If you don't know that kind of hope, ask someone who does.  And take comfort in the fact that THIS isn't all there is- thank goodness!

Merry Christmas from your Wingers!

Breakaway // LIVE

It's very rare that I make an appearance on this blog. Y'all may not even know I exist...but I do!! haha!
I'm the youngest daughter and I do NOTHING artsy like my mom & sisters...but I DO make music!!
Wanted to share a blog post with you that I wrote on my blog :

I have been truly blessed to be part of an amazing ministry in College Station, TX at the campus of A&M University called Breakaway.

Aaron, the guys & I are on a rotation to lead worship for this event on Tuesday nights. It is such an honor to be part of this team of people who love Jesus and desire HIS name to be made GREAT! The weeks we are not there the Jeff Johnson band & Jourdan lead or Jeremy McCasland and Donna Stuart lead. All of these bands are AMAZING!

We had the privilege to release a LIVE album to capture the worship that we get to experience on Tuesday nights. For students to be able to take home with them something that they can worship with outside of Tuesday nights.

This last Tuesday night we had our release party and worship night! It was GREAT!

All the bands were there and we each did a set and then all sang together at the end.

SO fun!!

Here is a video of behind the scenes:

We actually made it to the #2 slot of the Christian/Gospel section on iTunes!!!

If you want to get the CD:

Amazon

iTunes

Breakaway Ministries

Here are the songs:

1. The Name -- Aaron Ivey Band

2. Beauty of the Cross -- Jeff Johnson Band

3. Ruin Me -- Jeff Johnson Band

4. Be Thou My Vision -- Donna Stuart, Emily Ward

5. How Great Thou Art -- Aaron Ivey Band

6. Hallelujah What A Savior -- Aaron Ivey Band

7. Jesus Savior // Doxology -- Jeremy McCasland, Jeff Johnson

8. Radiate -- Donna Stuart, Jourdan Johnson

9. Solid Rock -- Jeff & Jourdan Johnson

10. Found -- Aaron Ivey Band

GO GET IT!! & much love.

--emily ward

Even MORE Pictures of "This Thing Called Family!!!"

Hope you're not getting tired of us, but we just added even MORE new pics to our "Demdaco Line" tab on our menu bar at the top of our blog.  This is the first time we've shown these pics!   These are items that were NOT at the open house, and that many of you have been waiting to see:  mirrors, pillows (including owls!), crosses, ornaments (with wings, of course) AND Lazy Susans!  I'm hoping that this sneak peek will entice you to go check it all out:

Just click on the picture or the link above to see the new pics!

There are STILL a few items out there that we haven't added to our Demdaco Line tab yet:  items that were at our open house that will get photographed individually and added soon, including sculptures,  and an item or two from all the other categories!

Feeling Crazy Good!

Mom Winger here. I don't post very often, because my girls do such a great job of that along with their photography skills (which I seem to lack). But I just wanted to share my heart with you today. I am feeling so overwhelmed by all the kind comments & words of encouragement coming from our fellow artists as our DEMDACO line is being revealed and ready for market. These compliments coming from artists that I greatly admire make me feel so humbled. Now that I have the nerve to share my thoughts on this, the words are trying to escape me!!! That just figures. But it feels "crazy good"!!! I just told a friend the other day that there are moments I just can't contain myself. . . times when I jump up and down as well as times when I cry from the joy . . . and other times I am confused, which is why I continually turn to my God and thank Him for placing me in a position to reach so many people for Him. . . .for His glory, not mine! I have been working at this art thing for so many years and am now trying to grasp the reality of what is happening. So thank you, friends, readers, bloggers, artists - all you good people who continue to support and encourage Things with Wings. We love you! Connie Berends

MORE Pictures of "This Thing Called Family!!!"

We're so excited to FINALLY be able to share pictures with you of our DEMDACO line, "This Thing Called Family" coming out next month.  We've updated our "DEMDACO Line" tab up there in the menu bar with a bunch of great pics!  These are the pics of the REST of the collection NOT seen at our open house that so many of you have been waiting for!!!  We'll be adding pictures of mirrors, lazy susans, pillows, and sculptures yet, so stay tuned!

This Thing Called Family - By DEMDACO, and Us!

One of the highlights of our open house last weekend was getting to share our new Demdaco collection with all of our guests!  We are beyond excited to be able to share it with all of you here too!  There are 48 pieces in the collection, but there was only a limited amount of space at our open house, so we had a tough time narrowing it down to our favorites!  Here's what we showed everyone on Saturday - 14 pieces - just a sampling of the entire line.

 

Our collection consists of wall art and home decor items, all centering around the theme of Family Values.  You all know we're ALL about family.  So we used some of our most popular sentiments and ideas and the things that really speak to us about the importance of home and togetherness.  We hope you all will find something that speaks to you and your family life too.

There are metal and wood sculptural pieces like the owl and flower on the left, and dimensional wall art as well.

There are fabric wall hangings like this house below that use a variety of fabrics and textures including burlap, wool and cotton.  Everything is stitched around very much funly.  (I don't know how else to describe it- my grammar is escaping me, THAT'S how excited I am!)

 There are pillows like this polka dotted cutie.  It made us squeal the first time we saw it.  Yes, sometimes polka dots make us squeal.  And little ornaments with wings hung by wire.  We love how they made these dimensional.  They layered the word on top of the heart, on top of the house so that there are different levels.  It's these authentic details that make us so proud of this collection:

One of our favorite, FAVORITE things about the collection are the 3 lazy susans like this "Count Your Blessings" one.   Why WOULDN'T you want one of these as your family's kitchen table centerpiece?! (There is also a 'Family Rules' one and a "Table Manners" one!)  And don't even get us started on the owl door stopper!  He's weighted, so he stands just about anywhere!

Another metal and wood heart sculpture and behind it a tree that we love.  They made the tree trunk out of metal and curved it slightly off of the base. 

There are 3 big 'anchor pieces' - big wall art like the Family Rules below.   Some of the letters and sections are raised.  SO much fun!  The other anchor pieces are "Count Your Blessings" and "Table Manners" and match the lazy susans!

This owl has metal wings, beak, feet and eyelids that are dimensional, as well as the words.  He is also outlined with wire!  We love him!

 There are several mirrors in our collection and here's one of our favorites:

We love that DEMDACO stayed so authentic to what we created.  They made sure that the collection had lots of dimension, detail and texture.  These pictures truly do NOT do it justice.  We're thrilled with how it turned out, and hope you will be too!

There is SO much more to show you:  more wall art in all kinds of sizes, more mirrors, more pillows, more fabric wall hangings.  THESE are just our very favoritest.  Because they're ALL our favorites, but THESE are the favoritest of our favorites.  :-)

We'll try to post pictures of everything else soon! 

Meanwhile, do us a favor?  As you're out and about doing your Christmas shopping, take note of businesses in your area who sell other DEMDACO products OR who don't but DO have our same aesthetic  - gift shops, home decor and specialty shops, hallmarks, christian bookstores, fun little independantly owned businesses and ask them about "This Thing Called Family" by DEMDACO.  Tell them what you know!  If you ARE one of these businesses and want more info about ordering our line, click here. 

Our line will start showing up in stores in January!!!!

Crescendoh

Thrilled to be sharing our story on Crescendoh, called "Faith Shining Through Art!"  Go check it out here!

Open House was a Success!

 Thank You, Thank You, Thank YOU!  - To all who came to our open house on Saturday!  We had a crowd of people all day long!  We hope you all found some one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts!  It was so good to see all of your smiling faces.  Giveaway winners were picked Saturday night and winners will be notified by each artist soon, if they haven't been already!



It's a lot of work to get ready for the open house, but oh so worth it!  We started Thursday night by emptying Laura's main floor of furniture into their garage and bringing in our display racks!  Friday we spent most of the day setting up our work, and helping our artist friends as they arrived with theirs.

This fun tree is always our centerpiece for our treat table:

 Special name tags for all our artists:

Lots of fun little things on shelves:

Finger Corsages:

Our giveaway table:

We had so much fun hanging out with our artist friends!  They all have great senses of humor and it's like hanging out with EIGHT sisters instead of two!   I swear some of us may have been separated at birth.  Here's a peek at their work.

Keri's paintings:

 

Marnie's accessories: headbands, pins, scarves, mittens. 

Shadley's paintings.  She had some of her originals scanned at a super high quality and made into cards:  Great Idea!

Bird's Eye view - and unfortunately the only shot I got of Diana and Marissa's jewelry!

We had such a successful turnout - our best yet!  This pic above was right at 10 when we 'opened!'  and not even how crazy crowded it really got later!  I was too busy later to even take pictures!

Everyone was so excited to see our new DEMDACO line: "This Thing Called Family" - which sorry, but it really deserves its own special post, so you'll have to wait to see pictures!  Aren't I the tease! 

Anyway, since we had such a great time - here's what we're contemplating for next year:  adding a Friday night shopping time to our open house in addition to our regular Saturday hours, and possibly having it somewhere else larger.  Problem is, Where?  What do you guys think?  We'd appreciate your feedback and any ideas of where we could have it next year.    Wouldn't it be fun to have some kind of musical entertainment and be able to host even more artists and encourage them in their work?!

Final Giveaway!

Here is your final giveaway! We are so excited for this weekend. Sounds like we're going to have a good turnout, so I'm expecting a pretty good little party! This is one of my favorite pieces, all done in acrylics. Here a few of my random facts, that you probably didn't think you ever really wanted to know about me.....
* My favorite color to paint with is "Spanish Olive" by Folkart, but in the IC area it's kind of hard to come by, so when I see it, I ususally buy all the bottles they have. (The other Wingers don't know this.....but I guess they do now.)
* I don't like to snuggle. But, everyone insists that I do. It's a sick game people like to play with me.
* I love to read. But, only unrealistic cheesy happy stories that wrap up nice and tidy by the end of the book like they're supposed to. I don't like any of this drama stuff that leaves you feeling
weird at the end.
* My feet are size 10 1/2. Guess what? They don't make shoes in a size 10 1/2.
* I like to have dance parties in my kitchen when my kids are at school. I think my neighbor, Carlos, accidently witnessed this once, but we don't talk about it.
* I have been searching for the perfect Christmas wreath for *YEARS*. I'm really picky about wreaths. I just think, in general, they're all ugly. But this year....I found it. I hung it with pride on my front door. It was made out of some wierd white poky things. Doesn't it sound beautiful??!? Long story, short. It somehow melted and stuck to my screen door and when I opened my front door on a really sunny warm day it ripped off and slid down my door, putting a big scratch down the door. It's all misshapen and it smells funny. I got all teary eyed and my husband just looked at me like I was from another planet. Men don't understand these things. The End.

**I feel really exposed and vulnerable now.

Onto happier things.....we got our DEMDACO boxes in the mail yesterday! I was in Target when I got the call and basically ditched my cart and raced to Jills. We are SO EXCITED to show you all. We'll try and get some pics up next week after we've recovered for those who couldn't make it to the show, but we would love for you to come out and see us! It's gonna be a party!

PRIZE #6 from Momma Winger!

Here is my contribution to our Open House drawing. This 16x20 canvas has it all! You got your paint, you got your wool, you got stitching, why you've even got a bit of paper! Best of all, you've got HOPE! We all need that. So I guess we Things with Wings girls are sharing little known facts about ourselves, huh? I've got a million of 'em. Let's see, for a few, here we go:
*I once went to church with a kleenex laying on top of my head.
*I was the feature baton twirler at my high school and once had to twirl in this skimpy little outfit during a snow storm and boy, was that baton cold!!!
*I like to eat potato chips in twos and by order of size, smallest to largest.
*I once rubbed elbows with Ted Kennedy.
*One of the best Christmas memories I have is when I got a pair of white canvas tennis shoes (probably abt. $1.99 then) and a pair of bobby socks to go with them.
Oh, gosh I could go on and on, but I won't, because I have to get busy and finish up a couple last minute things that need to show up in this open house Sat. See you then, friends!!!