Newsletter January 12, 2009

This is the content from our January Newsletter that just went out today, in case you didn't get it. To sign up for our newsletter go to our website www.carolinacreations.com, at the bottom of the home page there is a place to sign up to receive it . We send it once a month, except 2 in December, and we will not sell or share your email address with anyone.

Art from Our Hearts
The third annual Valentine Show and Sale is coming up!

Carolina Creations Fine Art & Contemporary Craft Gallery is hosting a Valentine Day Card Show January 26-February 14. The cards feature original works by K-12 Craven County Schools art students, representing a wide range of thought, style, and expression.

The cards are $3 each and all proceeds are donated to the Craven County Art Program. The 2008 event which raised more than $1500, featured a wide variety of materials, including hand-made paper, oil, pastel, collage, watercolor and ink.

From 5-7 pm on Friday January 30 you are welcome to bring friends and family to enjoy refreshments and meet Craven County's talented students. The cards will be on sale January 26-February 14. For more information call the gallery at 252-633-4369 or email info@carolinacreations.com.

Carolina Creations Celebrates 20 Years in Downtown New Bern
October 2009 - September 2010
This fall we will start celebrating our 20th year in business in Downtown New Bern! Watch for a year of celebration.

2008 was quite a year in our Downtown. Our Dickens celebration was a huge success. Our streets were crowded, the events were well attended and people are still talking about reading "A Christmas Carol" in our store windows.

As we look forward to this year, we'll keep our fingers crossed that business is good and that our downtown continues to thrive.

I was reading an article in "Home Accents Today", a magazine for retail businesses that sell home furnishings. The article was What's In, What's Out and was pleased to read that we have many of the things this article says are in. Like, cheese boards (we've got some beauties), hand made artisan items, made in the USA, (that's us!), beautiful serving bowls (we've got lots), nature themed (have you seen our leaf leather purses?), and there were more.

Sale on selected items
We don't often have sales, but we have some items that are the last pieces we have from an artist, or some things that just haven't sold for some reason. This is NOT a gallery wide sale. We have 4 displays of these items that are marked 45% off. The Christmas items we have on the sale rack are 60% off.
We want to make room for new items which will be arriving soon.
Why don't we have sales more often?
Our items are priced by our artists, the prices are not inflated and represent true value. You cannot compare a piece of glass that is stamped out of a machine by the thousands to a piece of glass that is hand blown by an artist. Or a piece of jewelry, or a piece of pottery, a wood creation or a hand tooled leather purse.

One of our artists sent us this quote: "My plea, then, is multifaceted. Support every art form you can. Go to concerts frequently, even if it is a beginning band from elementary school. Write to a Congress member and beg them to preserve our culture. Do all you can.

Use the arts to enrich someone's life and then teach them how to pass it on. Do all you can to preserve what painters, poets, dancers, sculptors, musicians, composers - what all artists have preserved: our humanity. Without the arts, we have nothing to exist for. Nothing to prove we existed. Nothing." - Chris Mindel 4/2000