Forum

The 2016 Secret Santa Report:

Hope your holidays were jolly and full of small moments to cherish. This was our 5th annual Secret Santa exchange. We are a community, all working in the creative economy and using our gifts and living by the seat of our pants to create a meaningful live for ourselves, so to ask you to send a gift to a "stranger/friend" means stepping out of the working for yourself and sharing the fine gifts we all have as artists. What a great job you did!

This year we had over 80 participants, a record number! 

Some great gifts were exchanged. You could really tell these did not come from China ;), but were lovingly handmade.

See many of them displayed here: http://www.artfairinsiders.com/forum/topics/here-comes-santa-part-ii-2016

Everyone who Santa-ed will receive our famous Red Dot bumper sticker in the mail. Please email me your mailing address.

Everyone who posted a photo/story of their gift at the above link was eligible to win a prize. This year's prize was a handmade deer tracks leather checkbook made by member Richard Sherer from Sherer Saddles.

Our esteemed judge was Trudi Van Dyke, an independent curator, free lance writer and artist consultant specializing in fine craft whose goal before she retires is to judge the top art festivals in the country. (of course Secret Santa qualifies!). If you've applied to the top shows she has seen your work.

Her choice: 

the winner is Maggie McHugh-Parrish; she wrote a clever piece about spiders in her mailbox and then received a spider ornament..and her picture was a nice collage with other spider things.

Congratulations, Maggie. Please contact me so we can get your prize to you. Special thanks goes also to her Santa, Mary Anne Maslanka, who sent her such a creative gift.

Thanks to everyone who participated. It was so fun and I loved seeing the gifts. Hope you'll play with us again next year. Look for the signup info in your mailbox in November!