VintageByCrystal By Crystal and Ben Sloane
An admirer of Audubon art and all things old, Crystal Sloane creates fanciful natural cotton figures. A true cottage industry, she works from her Victorian Gothic home to meld design, nature, life, and material. Selling on Etsy since 2007, she was a featured seller in 2015. “The animals look really lively on a tree if you get a collection, and for the people you know who collect things, it’s a really great, but unique, go-to gift,” said Crystal. She scavenges for tiny antique relics and natural finds, incorporating them into vintage-inspired bendable ornaments, table and cake toppers. This season, she is adding unicorns, giraffes, sloths, and fauna figures into the collection. While she focuses on the construction, her husband Ben does much of the photography, packaging, and quality-control aspects of the operation, which supports the Sloane family full-time, at home, while they raise two young children. This is possible, in part, to many of the orders and stores, world-wide, which have been able to find VintageByCrystal products through the Etsy online marketplace. “It’s just a place where people who appreciate hand-made crafts can go to get them,” said Crystal. FIND VintageByCrystal at the Vischer Ferry General Store “Meet the Makers”, 357 Riverview Road, Rexford, on November 10th at 7 p.m. and at the Saratoga Center for the Family Annual Craft Marketplace, November 25th, at the Saratoga Springs City Center, 522 Broadway, Saratoga Springs. For more information go to www.vintagebycrystal.com SS
38 | SIMPLY SARATOGA | HOLIDAY 2017
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