This December got off to a busy start with our trip to Chicago for the One of a Kind Show! The show was great, and we enjoyed seeing our Chicago collectors. We were also excited to debut our newest piece of wall sculpture - a large scale aquarium, filled with tons of unique sea creatures. The aquarium received a warm welcome in Chicago, and we were excited to ship them out to our collectors in Chicago & Florida!

After returning from the Chicago show, we enjoyed an early Hanukkah celebration with the Stepper family before starting the Harvard Square Holiday Fair this past Friday. The Harvard Square Holiday Fair is a great show that we enjoy doing every year. It runs all the way up to Christmas Eve this year, and it's always a great way to get into the holiday spirit! Check out this article in Yankee Magazine about New England holiday fairs, our Small Smiling Frog was featured! Your can get your own Small Smiling Frog here.

We hope everyone has a great holiday season & a very Happy New Year! Best wishes for a great 2012 from both of us!

Sculptures by Stepper headed north last weekend to the mountains of Vermont for the Craftproducers Manchester Fall Art and Craft Festival. We set up on Thursday, and spent the weekend with some great artists and craftspeople enjoying the picturesque views of the Hildene Estate, where the show was located. The Hildene Estate was the former home of Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln. The views were absolutely spectacular, and despite the rain, we were able to enjoy some of the famous fall foliage of Vermont.

We also got to meet some great new artists and friends at the show. Some of our favorites were:

Marsya from Marsya Jewelry
Marsya makes some beautiful yoga-inspired jewelry. Long wrapping necklaces and simple, but cool bracelets.

Trenny Robb of High Beams
Very cool custom handmade copper and brass lighting fixtures and mica shades incorporating organic elements like leaves and flowers. We think these would look great in our loft apartments.

Our "booth assistant" Amber spent most of her time partaking in the many shopping offerings of Manchester at the Manchester Designer Outlets. We didn't see much of her all weekend!

On the recommendation of the very friendly staff at the Manchester View Inn, where we had a fantastic stay in a very clean and inviting room, we ate at the Sirloin Saloon on Friday & Saturday night! They have a good salad bar and reasonable prices for satisfying food in a great, family-style atmosphere.

Although we had rain Saturday and Sunday, the Manchester crowd was out to support the arts and American craft & we enjoyed the town and beautiful setting.

We were very excited and honored to be features in the Arts Business Institute's Artist Profile this month. We were able to answer lots of questions about how we got started in the industry and what we do to keep our work new and fresh. We had a chance to share some lessons learned, and talk about our new corporate gift and wall art lines as well. We were thrilled to be able to share some of our experiences over the last fourteen years with their readers!

Click on the link here to read more: http://www.artsbusinessinstitute.org/artists/artist-profile-stepper-brothers-3/

Dave and I feel lucky to have met and shared our designs with hundreds of great collectors over the last twelve years. Our collectors are the reason we continue to strive to create new, innovative designs that bring smiles to peoples faces time and time again. Every time we ship out an order to our galleries, we look forward to hearing feedback and new ideas for our line.

From some of this great feedback, we were able to create this word cloud as a visual depiction of some of the comment we've received over the years ... the words that are biggest are the words our collectors used the most! No surprise to see "frog" front and center. We are excited about some brand new frog designs we're working on now, and plan to add to the Stepper Frogs collection very soon. Thank you again to all of our amazing collectors & galleries, your support is what makes our work so fulfilling!

Our brand new wall frogs made their debut at the Guilford Art Show this weekend. We got a great response on these brushed aluminum versions of two of our most popular designs - the Climbing Frog & the Smiling Frog. We're excited to introduce these statement pieces into our line!

Check out one of our great collector's Sculptures by Stepper display! Thanks to Ryan from Newark, OH for sharing this with us.

We're excited to be heading to the Guilford Art Expo in Guilford, CT from July 14th-17th. This will be our first time at the expo and we've heard some great things about Guilford.

The Guilford Green in particular is supposed to have some great shops and restaurants that we're hoping to checking out.

We're looking forward to seeing our CT collectors and meeting some new friends in this quaint, seaside town in a couple of weeks!