2012 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Erik Tosten, Erik Tosten Woodworking

Gift idea: wooden spoons

Price range: $20-$50

Where to find it: Oil & Cotton, Ro2 Gallery, etsy.com/eriktosten

Oak Cliff artist Erik tOstEn has two fine arts degrees in ceramics, but about three years ago, woodworking became his focus.

There’s no kiln in the shop behind Tosten’s house, but there are five or six antique hand lathes and a shave horse he made himself, among other tools for his craft.

Tosten, who teaches digital design full-time at University of Texas at Arlington, says Japanese and Scandinavian carving inspires him. He makes bowls, chopsticks and some furniture, but his favorite objects are spoons.

He likes to work in cherry, mesquite, hard maple, mahogany and, especially, black walnut. Some of his black walnut spoons have an almost iridescent tiger-eye pattern in the smoothed grain.

Tosten says he would like to use more local wood, but pecan is too hard and oak too porous for a good spoon. Sometimes he can find a big enough piece of malus, the wood from a crabapple tree, to make a spoon with mossy green and gold coloring.

Tosten says he learned woodworking from his dad.

“I was out in the garage making pinewood derby cars when I was 9,” he says.

Tosten has been making fine art for years, and when he started making spoons, some of his friends though it was a little strange. Some people don’t get why you would pay $35 for a hand-carved spoon when you can get one at Walmart for $1.

“It’s hard to compete with mass production,” Tosten says.

But the spoons Tosten makes touch people in a way that his previous artwork never had, he says.

“With my spoons, people will come find me to tell me how much they like them,” he says. “That doesn’t really happen with my other art.”

Ariel Saldivar, Olivia K

Gift idea: Edwardian-inspired memory locket

Price range: $125-$195 where to find it: Factory

Girl, St. Michael’s Woman’s Exchange, Nasher Museum Store

Late Victorian/ e dwardian jewe L ry is one of Ariel Saldivar’s passions. The 30-year-old Oak Cliff native is a musician and art curator. But she also designs for her own jewelry line, Olivia K.

Her newest design is based on late-19th century memory lockets. She bought one at flea market in New York City in 2004, and she recently copied elements of that design to produce one of her own.

The glass lockets unscrew at the top, and you can put a lock of hair or a picture inside. She orders the bezel glass from Los Angeles, but she produces the rest of the necklaces, all made of sterling silver, in her home studio. Saldivar usually works on her jewelry from 6-11 a.m.

“People ask me, ‘How can you do all this?,’ and it’s because I sleep five hours a night,” she says.

Saldivar also curates art for a wealthy family in North Dallas, and she’s a musician who tours with Canadian rock band Broken Social Scene.

Saldivar had an opera scholarship to New York University, but she graduated with a degree in art history.

“I had a bunch of hippie friends in college,” she says, explaining how she learned to make jewelry and other artistic tasks.

Part of her skill could be genetic, though: Saldivar recounts the time she came home from school to find her mother had created a mural in their kitchen using only electrical tape on the white wall.

“It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen,” she says. “I remember being amazed that you could create something so beautiful from something so simple as black electrical tape.” nicheLLe ritter says she “was a chemistry nerd in high school,” which is part of what led her to teach herself to make soap.

Saldivar has been making jewelry for years, but in January 2011 she became serious about it and launched Olivia K, named after her dog. She also is working on a line of three leather handbags embossed with gold and silver, plus a line of soaps, which she’ll be selling at the Wigwam pop-up shop at Oil & Cotton Dec. 6.

“I was afraid of the lye at first, but I got over that because it’s easy as long as you’re careful,” she says.

About 11 years ago, she made a big batch of soaps to give as Christmas presents, and she had a lot left over. Friends encouraged her to start selling them, so she entered her first craft show. Ritter gained loyal customers almost immediately.

She has since expanded her line of grooming products, Kitchen Beautician, to include lotions, bath bombs, salt scrubs, lip balms and hand-poured candles. She literally works out all of the recipes in her kitchen, and she offers scents including lavender, eucalyptus and peppermint, lemongrass and mint, and goat milk and honey.

Nichelle Ritter, Kitchen Beautician

Gift idea: Soap, lotion, bath stuff and candles

Price range: $5-$18 where to find it: kitchenbeautician.net, Bishop Arts District Saturday market

Ritter moved to Oak Cliff about 13 years ago after her job as beverage director for a restaurant company relocated her from Memphis, Tenn.

“I love the Cliff,” she says. “I’ll never leave here.”

Ritter says running a side business is fun because she gets to “see the power of marketing.” She loves hearing clients say they saw her Facebook post or email blast, she says.

But her best selling point is that she uses the products herself.

“When I started Kitchen Beautician, I stopped buying soap and lotion, so I only use my own products,” she says.