Central New York crafters create handmade holiday gifts straight from the heart
Much like Santa's elves, there are plenty of gift makers around the area working hard to bring their own personal touch to the holiday season.
Crafter Robin Clancy of Verona mainly makes gifts for family and friends, feeling those homemade items are true gifts of love. She specializes in creating stenciled shirts, etched glassware, mugs, advent calendar trees and other attractive home décor.
"I've always loved to do crafts," Clancy said. And as talented as she is in her home workshop, Clancy is just as graceful in her kitchen baking tasty treats for family and friends as well.
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Retired last year from her job as a Madison County CPS case worker, Clancy said she has even more time now for crafting - as well as babysitting her first grandbaby. She embraces modern computer technology in creating her shirt stencil designs, downloading programs custom tailored to her specifications that will actually cut out the stencils on a special printer.
The results are one-of-a-kind gift items, specially designed for each recipient on her list. Clancy said she feels that makes each gift extra special.
"I think my gifts truly come from the heart," she said. "I really love making gifts for my loved ones."
Marilyn Fegan is one of more than 20 members of Cazenovia Artisans, a cooperative retailer on Albany Street in Cazenovia where craftspeople work together to benefit all. She has Christmas and Hanukah gifts available at her booth there, including a colorful menorah and both colored and black and white tree ornaments.
An artist for 30 years now, Fegan's "FurnARTure" creations are an amalgam of painting and sculpture, artwork created on three-dimensional pieces of unusual "canvas." Fegan said she looks at typical household items like chairs and tables and envisions a surface to work her artistry on. Her craft even gives new life to old pieces of furniture that would likely have been discarded otherwise.
"I will paint on anything that isn't moving," Fegan quipped.
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Cazenovia Artisans is both a shop and a gallery for area artists and crafters, owned and operated by its members who alternate working several half-day shifts a month. It features locally made items including jewelry, pottery, woodwork, blown glass, paintings and photographs.
Fegan has been a member nearly since the shop opened two decades ago. She said getting to mingle with her fellow artists and seeing their latest crafty creations is her favorite part of working there.
"It's really fun to come in here," Fegan admitted. "I just love seeing what everyone else has been doing when they bring in their latest work. We have so many different things in here, and I think we really have something for everyone."
"Reindeer Parking: One Night Only." "'Tis the Season to be Freezin'!" "You Make Me Melt." Signs adorned with these messages are just a few of the many holiday gift items available at Brenda Thorna's Whistle Post Creations shop.
"I just love this time of year," she said. "It is just so much fun to be able to share the spirit with others."
Located on Route 20 in Bouckville, right in the heart of the antiques and collectibles community, the Whistle Post Creations inventory includes signs; Cookie Kits with a combo gift pack of cookie mix, a potholder and a spatula; colorful tree ornaments and even decorative gnomes, which Thorna said are quite popular this year.
Thorna opened the shop in October 2020. She also has been spreading her holiday gift cheer recently throughout area craft shows, visiting Solsville, Taberg, Syracuse and the Fingerlakes Mall in Auburn with her creations. And as an extra holiday bonus, Thorna will be offering a prize drawing Dec. 24 for a $25 gift certificate to spend in the shop.
Her dedication to her crafts and pleasing her customers often means late nights ... time when she can truly empathize with those North Pole diminutive denizens.
"I really feel like an elf, especially when I am still working at three in the morning," Thorna admitted. "But I am used to burning the midnight oil to get my projects done."
Mike Jaquays is the community news reporter for the Mid-York Weekly. Email him at mjaquays@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Central New York crafters create handmade holiday gifts from the heart
