Spot and Share!

We love, Love, LOVE when you guys spot some of our work and share it with us! 

We've had spottings and photos sent to us from all around the country and that never fails to blow our minds!

Here's some of our mom rules for "This Thing Called Family" that a Facebook friend spotted:

Gabby's Gifts - Galena, IL

This sighting of TTCF is super cool because this shop is owned by Leigh Standley DiBernardo AKA Curly Girl Design.

Marmalade - Belmont, MA

TTCF in a Marriott gift shop, LAX (spotted by one of our mother-in-laws!)

We spotted some of our alphabet tiles for TTCF, spelling the words "fun, "bones" and "candy" in this spooky store display!

Broadbent Gifts - Cadiz, KY

Our Welcome sign for TTCF appears in this super cool wall photo - we were tagged on Instagram!

Recently Green Girl Laura herself was watching House Hunters on HGTV and one of the houses had our "Believe" sign from TTCF hanging in the laundry room!

Ya'll are also great at sending us photos of our original pieces in your homes!
 It means the world to us that you would take the time to share these!

A friend's gallery wall featuring 2 of our original pieces.

customized home piece, hung on Becky's covered porch in Greeneville, TN

customized and coordinating welcome sign and house numbers

an original ABC's for the preschool Mama Winger used to work at!  Hung down low just for little peeps to look at!

ABC's hung in a home school room - Kodiak Island, Alaska

"Buddy the Cat loves his new picture!" from Amanda in Greeneville, TN

We want to know if you are out and about shopping and come across one of our lines in a store: This Thing Called Family by DEMDACO or {Enjoy} the Little Things by C.R. Gibson.  Snap a photo of the display!  

We would also love to see how our licensed work or our originals look in your home! 

There are lots of ways you can share your photos with us.  We'd love to pass them along and re-share them with everyone! You are always welcome to share in the following ways:

You can share a photo on our Things With Wings Facebook page.

Tag us @thingswithwings on Instagram.

Email photos to paperprayers@hotmail.com

Anytime!  Seriously!

BIG thanks to all of you who take the time to thrill us with your photos!

Find Things With Wings at the Summer Gift Markets!

Retailers-

We've gathered all of the resources for finding Things With Wings products at the Summer gift markets into one convenient post!

(Now that we're working with a few different companies, it can get confusing.
We thought this might make it a little simpler!)

1st-

Head to the DEMDACO showroom!
The link will take you to a list of the exact locations for Atlanta, Dallas, Denver and Las Vegas.

This is where you'll find "This Thing Called Family" - our longest running line.  In our DEMDACO line you'll find many functional kitchen items, the Mom Rules (wall versions and NEW mini block versions!) the alphabet collection, lots of wall art, and brand NEW for this summer: tea towel/spoon gift sets with coordinating mugs and chopping boards.

Plus much, much more!

New for Summer 2014!

2nd:

Head to the C.R. Gibson Showroom!
The link will take you to more info on exactly where their showroom is in Dallas, Atlanta and Las Vegas.

This is where you'll find {Enjoy} the Little Things.  Included in this line are photo albums, journals, a sticky note set, gift enclosure cards, burlap wall art, block plaques, and more!  Brand NEW this summer - a Christmas collection you'll love!

New for Summer 2014!

3rd:

Head to the Magnet Works Showroom!
The link will take you to more detailed info about where their showroom is located in Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Minneapolis.

Here you'll find our collection of family-oriented MatMates and Drinkblots. MatMates are an interchangeable mat system that can be used as welcome mats or kitchen mats on their own, but really come to life when inserted into the trays.  You can trade out the art based on the seasons or your mood!

Also at Magnet Works you'll find our family-themed Christmas DrinkBlots!  DrinkBlots are beautiful, super-absorbent paper art coasters that come in notepad-inspired packaging. They are reusable, recyclable and sturdy. One of the remarkable things about DrinkBlots is that each set contains 24 unique designs, so no two coasters in the deck are the same! 

We hope this makes your shopping trip a little easier.
Have a great time!

If you have any questions, just let us know.

Let us know what you order-
And since we won't be there ourselves, take some photos for us!  :-)

Studio by DEMDACO 2014

Here's a fun video that DEMDACO put together of all of their 2014 Studio Lines!

(This Thing Called Family makes an appearance at about 2:35!)

Let us know if you have any questions about our new kitchen collection or the new mini Mom Rules blocks!

Retailers- if you're interested in adding the newest pieces from This Thing Called Family to your store contact your local DEMDACO rep ASAP - Mother's Day is right around the corner!

Customers- tell your local gift and specialty shops that you want them to carry our new kitchen line!  We cannot tell you how important and valuable your word of mouth has been - it's what's made TTCF such a success!  We are so grateful for your enthusiasm and support of the line!

Atlanta Market + DEMDACO

We've been sort of taking a little break after our visit to the Atlanta Gift and Home Market.  We've spent a lot of time thinking, dreaming and scheming too! Reflecting on what God has done, where we've been, and where we'd like to go in the future.  Good conversations about the Things With Wings "brand" and our mission to reach as many people as we can with encouraging messages that celebrate family in all its messy glory/reality.  It's been a really, really good period of thanksgiving and perspective!

But now we're realizing we never really posted here on the blog about our trip!   If you follow us on Facebook, (we hope you do!) then you're probably already up to speed.  But it's always good to put everything in one place though too, because who knows, maybe you missed some of it!

Today we'll show you the DEMDACO showroom.   Many of the new January products for "This Thing Called Family" are kitchen - related.  Cute, colorful and still containing encouraging messages, but also serving a purpose.  Double duty! 

So the DEMDACO design team built a 360 degree pillar "kitchen" right in the middle of the showroom!

Look at those scallops at the top! Do they know us, or what?!

    

We finally got to meet Corey, the leader of the Demdaco design team, and thank him for all of his hard work and creative vision.  He told us that he went to every Target in the Minneapolis area to clear out each store's stock of colored rolling pins when he discovered them in the dollar section!

Us with Corey

One of the many cool things that Corey and his team did was to take some of our new wall art and turn them into cupboard doors for the display.  

New kitchen art: "My Kitchen [where all the good stuff happens.]"

Also new, there are a number of small chunky block versions of our mom rules!  Some of them are brand new designs/messages!

There's a new magnetic menu board with a variety of choices like "Fend for yourself" and Mom's night off."

that's a cutting board in the lower left corner!

This house design reads, "We are an amazing, unique, one-of-a-kind, loyal, tight-knit, hug it out, kind of family." You can now find it on a kitchen floor mat and on a set of 4 clear vinyl wipeable placemats.  There is another equally cute set of placemats that has a meal time prayer on it, but we somehow missed getting a photo of it!

More useful items in the new kitchen collection:

melamine tray, oven mitt, pot holder

silverware caddy and trivet

Laura's husband got to join us this year for the first time!  Here he is modeling our new apron and we'll just pretend like he's giving it a thumbs up!

Other new wall art, (upper left + lower right) mini mom rule block and a small house cutting board:

The alphabet program has it's own cute displayer that we love!  The pieces in this collection can be personalized to create your own message.  There are frames, individual letters and key words to help you create a unique family welcome wall.

Our christmas collection had its own featured section:

And a whole other section with lots of tried and true favorites!

We feel blessed beyond measure to be doing this job and to have this kind of presence in the DEMDACO showroom.  There are so many incredible lines at DEMDACO and the design team does a wonderful job of giving them each their own "spotlights" and making them all shine.  Then there are bazillions of other companies out there, with all of their collections.  How anyone ever finds or picks ours is incredibly humbling.

If you are a retailer interested in ordering "This Thing Called Family" you can visit Demdaco's Retailer website to find your local rep or get 2014 showroom info.

If you are a customer wanting to find some of these new items, you should start to see them showing up in gift, home decor and specialty stores very soon!  You can use the store locator to find retailers in your area who carry TTCF.  Also, we never underestimate the power of your "word of mouth!"  YOU are what has made this line a success, and we are so grateful for you!  Tell your favorite gift shops about us and the new kitchen collection or share this post with them! 

Summer Gift Market Time

The Atlanta and Dallas gift markets have ended, but still yet to come is the Denver and Las Vegas markets!

We are not personally attending any markets this summer because we've been hard at work creating for some exciting NEW opportunities for 2014!  We just wrapped up the creating portion and got 2 large boxes in the mail on Monday and boy did it feel gooooood (and a little scary) to send it out into the world!

We hope that retailers are checking out our brand new alphabet collection and ordering our new Christmas line for the upcoming holiday season at the summer markets!  It never ceases to amaze us and we hope we never forget how blessed we are that out of the bazillions of incredible choices that retailers have, they somehow choose us.  We are truly thankful!

It only drives us a teensy bit nuts to see our facebook feeds light up with other people's market photos and stories - so we are always overjoyed when someone takes the time to share photos with us! 

Here are some photos of our "This Thing Called Family" display in Atlanta:

Our new alphabet collection features individual letter tiles, photo frames and words-of-welcome plaques that can be combined to create your own unique message!

Mama Winger's skinny abc's are new! They come in 3 different themes:  home, family and spiritual.

This photo is currently featured on the DEMDACO facebook page!

Here are some more ideas on how our new alphabet program can be used to create a personalized message in your home:

You can find out more about the story behind how this collection came to be by going here.

If YOU are a retailer attending the remaining markets in Denver or Las Vegas, we'd LOVE it if you'd snap a photo of TTCF in the DEMDACO showroom!  You are welcome to upload photos directly to our facebook wall!  Extra brownie points if YOU are in the photo too, because YOU are what has made TTCF a success!  :-)

*Check out Gabby's Gifts online store!  They now carry the letter tiles, word plaques and frames to create your own wall!  

DEMDACO Look Book for Summer Markets!

If you are a retailer heading to any of the summer gift markets this month in Atlanta, Las Vegas or Denver, be sure to check out DEMDACO's latest Look Book video to see what all's new.  We still can't believe we get to be amongst such amazingly talented artists.  Aren't they all amazing?!  It's always a joy to see all of their newest designs!

You can find out more about our new summer alphabet collection for "This Thing Called Family"  from this earlier blog post.

We also have a really fun new Christmas line and a collection of mom rules too that have been a big hit! So be sure to check those out as well!