Artapalooza 2013

ARTapalooza in Cedar Falls was hot, hot, HOT this year!  Fortunately it has cooled down around here since then.  It is FINALLY starting to feel a bit like fall!  

But man, oh man was it hot.  At ARTapalooza we sold our original, handmade, one of a kind pieces.  Here are some photos of what our displays looked like:

Here are a few fun new pieces from Mama Winger:

kid-sized chair

We adopted this katydid as Green Girl's new mascot.  He entertained us (and scared a few unsuspecting customers) as he travelled all the way around our booth.

Our local DEMDACO rep, Leslie kindly brought us some Look Books to show people what else we do!
When people ask us if we have our own store in Iowa City, we always tell them about "This Thing Called Family" so it's nice to have the visuals!

We always hang up this sign too at the front of our booth:

Our katydid friend travelled over to our table and kept the birds company:

We were blessed with a visit from Emily whose story continues to blow us away.  We wrote about her wait for a heart and lung transplant and the art she bought to put in her hospital room while she waited here. And we celebrated and gave thanks to God here when she updated us that she'd gotten her transplant! Last year she stopped in at ARTapalooza again, almost a year after her transplant, to buy something for her hospital neighbor who was still waiting.  See what she bought her friend here.  Now it's been 2 years since her heart and lung transplant, and Emily stopped in just to tell us she's doing great!  Yay!  It was great to see her face!

How about you?  Did you make it to ARTapalooza?  What did you buy?!

We'd LOVE to see your new Things With Wings art in your home ---- you are always welcome to upload photos to our facebook wall!     It would make our day!!!

ARTapalooza 2011

ARTapalooza in Cedar Falls this past weekend was a blast!  We loved the atmosphere, the weather and all of the great people that we got to visit with!

Here are some highlights of our booth:

This show was our first experience using our new Square device to process credit cards.  Although we were a bit nervous about the whole thing, it worked really well, was very easy and fast to use and it's going to be a great benefit to our totals!  

Last year we were thrilled to win the Merchant's Award - which was our first time at this show.  This year look at what we won:  "Best of Show!"  A group of about 10 members from the ARTapalooza committee came to our booth, made a little speech, took our picture, and presented us with a ribbon and check!  Then they all clapped!  It was quite the little moment!  So we hung our ribbon next to this cool name sign that they made for all the artists to hang in their booths. 

A reporter from the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier interviewed us for this article about the event. 

This is a show that really takes good care of all of their artists.  They provided us with a sack breakfast, sack lunch, bottles of water and a trail mix snack.  We've got to keep up our strength you know!  We truly appreciated the thoughtfulness and care.

But even more amazing were all of the stories that we had the privilege to hear from customers about why they were buying a particular piece.  Humbling and exciting to be a small part of what God is doing in others' lives!  Those special stories will be coming up next, plus a look at some of Mamma Winger's newest pieces.

In the meantime, we're getting ready for Riverssance, this weekend in Davenport!

An Update from a Super Brave Customer

Thanks so much to all of you who came out to ARTapalooza yesterday!   We had such a blast! And the weather was perfectly gorgeous.

We'll definitely be sharing some pictures with you soon of our newest designs and our booth, but in the meantime, we wanted to share this exciting update we got from someone you may all remember from last year's ARTapalooza!

It was a huge surprise blessing to get a visit from Emily, who had her heart and lungs transplant almost a year ago now and is doing wonderful!!!  At last year's event, you may remember, we met Emily for the first time just as she was getting ready to go in for her long hospital stay to await a donor.  She bought something from us to put in her room to help her be brave.

You can read her story here and here.    She ended up waiting 2 1/2 months (in the transplant wing) for her donor and had a long stay afterwards to recover.  She's doing amazing now, but I'm sure it was a long road!  Can you even imagine?!

So THIS year to celebrate and to encourage she bought a new piece for her friend to have in her room while she is still waiting for her transplant.

The piece she picked out has the perfect message for someone who is waiting:

"Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen."

God is so good!  How humbling it is, how thankful we are to get to do this job, and how we love Him more and more to get these glimpses of His work!

New Work from Mamma Winger at ARTapalooza!

ARTapalooza was a couple of Saturdays ago in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  The weather was beautiful and it was a very fun and busy day!


FYI: Most of these pieces were sold at our last 2 shows.  But if you're interested in finding out if Connie could create something again that's similar, email her at creativewks35@aol.com

Here are some of my favorite new pieces by Mamma Winger:

abc's of life

skinny abc's 

Green Girl at ARTapalooza.

Yesterday I showed you some of Mamma Winger's latest and greatest pieces.  If you missed it, go there right now and remedy that situation immediately!

OK, now that that's taken care of, let's take a look at some of Green Girl Laura's art from ARTapalooza!

*Many of these pieces have sold, but if you email Laura at greengirldesigns@gmail.com she can give you more deets and let you know if she could make you something similar.

Here are some pics I took of my favorites:

This piece wins the prize for getting the most comments/laughs from customers!

This piece wins 2nd place for getting the most smiles/comments from customers!  

Be Nice. 

Be....

Love these pieces with the vintage silverware!

I know it's hard to choose, but which one of Green Girl's new pieces is your favorite?!  I know, it's like asking you to choose your favorite child-  they're ALL your favorites, right?!

If you're a Pinterest user, we'd love to see which one(s) you chose to pin AND follow your boards, so leave your links in the comments!

(Our Pinterest boards are here:  http://pinterest.com/thingswithwings in case you'd like to follow us!)