Last week of February!

The snow continues to pile up in front of the studio, encouraging us to stay inside and work! This week we are thinking big - two new large Santas are complete and ready to go. And after several hours with tweezers and adhesives, one large elegant Belsnickle with a wonderful glass icicle beard!
Now it's time to go in by the fire and work on the itinerary for our planned 2014 Christmas Market tour to Germany!

Brrrr!

With the temperature dipping to -35C and winds howling, little can entice us to leave the cozy studio these days! This is the time of year for new projects and new ideas, production planning in theory but mostly a lot of giggling and laughter! Last weekend we realized Valentine's Day was just around the corner, so we decided to make a little Pug candy container who could be a Valentine. You just have to smile when you see the face of a little Pug, don't you?

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's back to work we go...

and I'm not telling who is Grumpy and who is Sleepy! Just kidding, really-
It is cold -17C and it has been snowing steadily for two days, so it is a great time to turn on some music in the studio and get back to work!
This fellow came to life today. He's for our friend James in New Jersey.
(More about James, a talented artist, on another day)

For those of you who have been asking for the little doll candy containers, we put the finishing touches on some and posted four of them on the shopping page.
Click on the image below to go to the shopping page.

Happy Haliburton Highlands Christmas!

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to help us celebrate the holiday season at Carole Finn's Studio in Haliburton this weekend. The ice and snow arrived just in time to add the appropriate ambiance and Anne's spiced cranberry grog warmed everyone's spirits. We continue to be astonished by the dynamic Carole Finn! She is a prolific painter, she makes exceptionally beautiful screen prints, she is a graphic designer, photographer, mother and grandmother, and a gracious hostess. Not only that, we suspect she never sleeps! Thank you to Carole for arranging the weekend and hosting the festivities.

 

Paintings by Carole Finn, Haliburton, Ontario, Canada

Santas from Two Sisters Studios

Santa donated for silent auction to benefit

Arts Council of Haliburton Highlands

 

by Carole Finn

 

 

Two happy sisters, Lynn Murray & Anne Thornton-Trump,

Two Sisters Studios, Algonquin Highlands.

 

 

 

Join us for some Christmas cheer!

Next Friday and Saturday, December 21-22. Hope you can be there! Christmas music, refreshments, last minute shopping in beautiful Haliburton, Ontario...

Happy Christmas to All!

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Many thanks to all who participated in our St Nicholas Day sale. 

All sale items and custom orders are being shipped today 

to reach you before Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

St Nicholas Day Sale!
Thursday, December 6th, is St Nicholas Day. To celebrate, we are having a sale of our one-of-a-kind Santa candy containers. Prices include free shipping within North America. Sorry, no lay-aways for this special sale. Payment is by PayPal only. The sale lasts until Sunday night at midnight. Click on the image below to go to the sale.....

Happy Thanksgiving America!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Santa Exhibit in Progress

When you are given a second chance at life, it has a profound effect on your outlook and your priorities. At least that's what happened to me. All through the surgery and follow-up treatments, my sister and I were working on Santas for an exhibit in Paris. This was the added incentive I needed to get well. As a way of saying thank you, we decided that the Santas should be employed to make someone else happy too! We donated our year's work to the Kathe Kruse Museum in Donauworth, Germany. They are to be sold as a fund raiser to be used to purchase antique Kathe Kruse dolls for the museum collection. Here a few of the Santas photographed as the exhibit was being mounted last week.

 

Why the Kathe Kruse Museum? There are numerous reasons, chief among them, our admiration for Kathe Kruse. She survived adversity from the time she was born, but she was never daunted. She supported her family with her doll making through two wars, the Great Depression and the communist take over of her country. The survival of the company was due mainly to Kathe Kruse's remarkable ability to adapt and diversify, lessons that are as important today as they were 100 years ago.

  

The company continues to thrive through diversity in the modern global economic community. They are the longest continuously producing German doll company in existence. Their classic dolls are made with the same degree of handwork as in 1912, a tradition that we embrace in our Santa-making.

Our Santas will be on exhibit at the Kathe Kruse Museum, in the Donauworth Heimatsmuseum and at the Kris Kindl Markt. They are for sale in all three places.

And Away We Go!

Time to map out the plan for 2013! Production and shipping will start again in mid-November.
In the meantime, we are headed for the Fall flea markets, brocantes and the start of the Kris Kindl Markts. We are off to Europe hunting for antique Santas, Belsnickles, Nodders and all kinds of tiny toys to put in their toy packs. We'll post pictures and some exciting news when we get to Germany!
Thanks to our great friends L & B who are taking care of things while we are away!
Thanks to everyone who made this season a great success for Two Sisters Studios!

New Santas Available

Item 1012 

 

16-inch Santa candy container with a smile and painted teeth, a very unusual face that collectors either love or really do not like. This fellow has a long wool beard, deep toned flannel coat with antiqued white trim, hand-woven toy pack filled, goose feather sprig. He also carries a toy drum hung over his left arm. SOLD

Thank you, D.

Item 1013

17-inch Santa Candy Container with stuffed hat, in lightly distressed antique red flannel coat with white trim, carrying goose feather sprig in riht hand and with woven toy pack containing miniature book and Erzgebirge wooden toys.  SOLD Thank you, J.

Item 1014

17-inch Santa Candy Container with stuffed hat, wearing distressed antique red felt coat with white trim and carrying a goose feather sprig and a woven toy pack filled with miniature Erzgerbirge toys and a miniature book. SOLD  Thank you, C.

 

WINNER

The winner of the 16-inch Santa 

given as a door prize for the Studio Tour is

Penny Elliot from Kushog Lake, Ontario

Congratulations, Penny!

Thank you!

It was wondeful to see so many familiar faces and to meet so many new people over the weekend! Thank you for the thoughtful emails and phone calls...they really did bring us "Good luck & success!" Thank you for making the trip to visit our studio, from near and far...specially to our visitors from Germany and the US. We are so happy that many of you went home with new Santas and Belsnickles for your collection! On our few days between the first and second weekend, we are busily finishing more 34" Santas. Who could have guessed that they would be so popular... we sold out!  The walking Santas are all gone too, but no time to make more before the long weekend. Still we have some surprises that we kept up our sleeve for this weekend....

 

16" Santa with tray of Erzgebirge toys.

STUDIO TOUR STARTS THIS WEEKEND!

September 27th and the skies are blue, the sunshine warm and the loons still on the lake.  You might consider it early to think about Christmas, but it is less than 90 days from now! Of course, around here, it is Christmas every day. This year the actual decorating began on September 10.
It all starts with a lot of sweating and groaning dragging our tree up from the basement, then a mixture of swearing and giggling as the two of us attempt to assemble it. From atop a twelve-foot ladder, I teeter and fight vertigo, while Anne stands helplessly below wondering if she should steady the ladder or run for cover!

Next come the more than 1000 ornaments, each carefully tucked into a zippered bag the year before. When adding ornaments becomes tiresome, we break for a swim in the lake with the dogs. Back to work a little later....

The main tree takes a couple of days and the smaller trees just seem to appear by magic after that! Then there is the simple matter of moving the furniture to accommodate trees, Santa displays and the streams of visitors we hope to see over the next 10 days! 

 Because we live in the North, we have to have a Santa in a birchbark canoe and a fur clad Santa, loaded with a wooden toy pack on his back. (SOLD)

This bearded Belsnickle is a rare fellow - very elegant and one of our favorites!

 

The studios has been dusted and scrubbed, polished and swept...we are ready!

 

A 33-inch Santa stands with the pencil trees in the foyer, waiting to greet our guests. (SOLD)

 

The library mantle seemed the perfect place for the blue brigade.

 

This little fellow is a candy container, holding a candy container, 

with a third candy container in the big snowball.

So how many ornaments do you guess would be enough?
Is there any such thing as enough?

Each studio on the tour serves refreshments, so guess who made 3000 gingerbread cookies this week?

The dog helped of course - that's why they are both crashed out on the couch!

As for the cranberry wassail....how many gallons would you guess? We'll let you know!

 Our friend in Paris, Guido Odin, loaned several of his fabulous Santa chromos for us to hang on the walls. If you suspect from this picture that the dogs live well in this house, you would be correct.

 

The ever amusing and vigilant Percy is not sure if he approves of all the sweeping and polishing. He was rather fond of the mica dust and the fur balls hiding under the work tables.

 

Off to post our signs!

 

Studio Tour stop "U"

17102 Highway 35

Algonquin Highlands, Ontario, Canada

Hope to see you!