Art Fair Season Begins

Cottage Garden Studio debuts at the Teton Valley Art Market this weekend, June 4th!!! All four collections of notecards will be for sale. The Art Market begins at 9am and ends at 3pm. Look forward to seeing you there!

“Moose on Holiday”

Several years ago, a bull moose was peering into our Accounting Office’s windows and a co worker sent me this photo….I felt he deserved a place in my upcoming Holiday Collection of notecards!

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Holiday Seagull

I couldn’t resist painting a seagull with a Holiday wreath around its neck! I think I might add this to my Holiday Collection. What do you think?

Holiday Seagull

Holiday Notecard Designs…

I have an appointment with my printer in Salt Lake in May and am hoping to be able to provide some solid designs for Cottage Garden’s Holiday Collection. These photographs are the beginning.

This is a mussel shell wreath which I made many years ago. I collected the shells from a beach on Parker Point in Blue Hill, Maine. I then boiled them to get rid of any dirt, etc. and then glued them to a wreath form. Incredibly tedious! This was one of the very first products that I thought I would sell through Cottage Garden Studio back in 1999!!! Then life happened and we moved to Wyoming from Maine. Here we are 22 years later. I thought this would be an appropriate design for my first Holiday Collection.

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Our Western Collection

The Western Collection

After having lived in New England my entire life, my family and I moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What a change of pace, literally. It was thoroughly refreshing to embrace a somewhat more laid back way of life. The most startling and exciting change was the abundance of large game animals everywhere including bison, elk, moose and deer. It was not uncommon for a moose to find a spot in the sun on the porch of our office building. I chose these particular designs for our Western Collection because they typify “the western lifestyle”.

Our Garden Collection

The Garden Collection

Soon after moving to Vermont in 1984, I learned the “ins and outs” of true garedening from a local farmer up the road. He taught me everything I would need to know to produce my very first vegetable garden. What an education! There began my love for gardening. To this day, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction and pride to grow things from little tiny seeds. Also, while living in Vermont, I was a member of the Woodstock Garden Club where I learned the basics of how to make topiaries. As a result, our Garden Collection of notecards highlights my old Hunter gardening boots, a wheelbarrow, a watering can, a topiary along with a dragonfly and a Monarch butterfly.

Our Coastal Collection

The Coastal Collection

I was born and raised in the great state of Maine. From the time I was a toddler, my family and I would visit Pemaquid Beach for picnics. I have the most vivid memories of sitting on the rocks while enjoying the picnic lunch that Mom packed that morning. What would follow sticks in my mind even today. The seagulls would hover over us while we ate and swoop down to grab food from our hands. Then, I thought it was magical. The seagull was the first image I painted that began this entire journey……

The Launch of Cottage Garden Studio

This past year has changed many lives in dramatic ways, mine included. My 25-year travel career came to an abrupt halt in June of 2020. Thankfully, I had started watercoloring again a few years ago after a 40-year hiatus. What better time to give it a go? Here is my story…

youtube.com/watch?v=Pbs8TJ1_9oQ