Thursday, December 16, 2010

Today's Featured Artist --- Tins and Treasures

Today's featured artist is Natalie Geffre from Tins and Treasures.



Natalie is a wife, mother of two beautiful daughters, crafter and also is a full time Family and Consumer Science teacher in South Dakota.
Natalie likes to make a variety of crafts.


She started crafting when she was about 8 years old. She started making doll clothes by hand, and her mother taught her to embroider on dishtowels.
She learned to sew on a machine when she was 10 and her 4-H leader taught her to knit.
In college she majored in Textiles and Clothing, where she took every class possible in Clothing Construction and Fiber Arts.


  She started her craft business locally 15 years ago,  calling it Tins and Treaures partly because of the unique tins she makes.    Treasures encompasses a  variety of other handmades.    She started selling online when she opened her Etsy shop over two years ago.

Her husband,  Scott helps her in the business and makes their popular bottle necklaces.
Their wood items are a joint effort with Scott cutting them out,  staining and assembling them and Natalie does the painting and embellishing.

Natalie's inspiration came from her grandmothers. She  says, "The women of their generation had large families and no convenience foods or appliances available to them.   They milked the cows, gathered the eggs, tended their gardens, kept the fire going in the stove, picked berries and made jelly, baked bread,  washed clothes on a washboard.....need I say more?    But yet they found time to make beautiful quilts and crocheted bedspreads and even embroidered the days of the week on their dishtowels."

Natalie can be found online here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/tinsandtreasures
http://www.etsy.com/shop/nataliesnotions
http://www.tinsandtreasures.blogspot.com