Thank you.
That’s what you’ll hear when you give one of these unique made-right-here-in-the-neighborhood gifts.
The holidays are a time of mass-manufactured items and stores galore. In Preston Hollow, we have more than enough places to shop, but is it worth the traffic and trudging through checkout lines at the mall? Gifts for friends and loved ones might be even closer — and better yet, made locally. We found a few crafty neighbors who are hard at work this holiday season.
Glenda Sorensen, Personalized Bottiglia Bottles
Glenda Sorensen. Photo by Can Türkyilmaz
Price range: $10–$35
Where to find it: PK’s Wine and Spirits, 9221 Midway, 214.350.4344 or 8611 Hillcrest, 214.234.0383
The last drops of a wine bottle are the beginning of Glenda Sorensen’s craft. Sorensen takes empty wine bottles to Camille Murphey of Camille’s Creations, who uses her kiln to transform them into different shapes. Wine bottles are sentimental for some, and can be flattened by the kiln’s flame to later be used as wall decorations, or molded to form bowl-like shapes to serve dips and chips.
All kinds of customers, from wine enthusiasts to people saving champagne bottles from their wedding, bring their bottles to Sorensen to be turned into keepsakes.
The biggest catch of the craft is removing the delicate wine labels from the bottles before they are slumped and molded.
“I have to use everything from water to Goo Gone and the blow dryer. [Francis Ford] Coppola, his labels are almost impossible to get off,” she says of the iconic film director and wine impresario.
Sorensen designs custom labels, too, from the humorous to the elaborate. Her non-individualized creations can be purchased at PK’s Wine and Spirits, the family-run business her husband owns.
In fact, PK’s business manager Judy Rose inspired Sorensen to re-use the bottles in the first place.
“I have the most fun when someone wants a special order,” Sorensen says. “I have a great desire to be creative and am constantly thinking of ‘the next great idea.’ ”
Liz Morgan, Liz Morgan Apparels
Liz Morgan. Photo by Danny Fulgencio.
Prize range: $60-$795
Contact: 972.458.7947 or lizmorganapparel@live.com
Women started showing up at Liz Morgan’s home in 1992 shortly after a story about her outfitting Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders for photo shoots appeared in Dallas Cowboys Weekly.
Morgan opened her own store, Liz Morgan Apparels, at Village on the Parkway in 1997 and ran it for several years before deciding to sell it to one of her clients.
The timing was right because her grandson, now 13, was coming to live with her. But Morgan’s clients still wanted her one-of-a-kind ensembles, so she opened her home again to sell signature pieces under the same name.
Morgan orders clothes from 30 different vendors that she uses to style and dress the likes of teenagers to 80-year-olds. She also designs some of her own clothes based on her and her clients’ tastes.
Women come to her house and shop out of rooms lined with racks of pantsuits, jeans, furs, leather, trousers, dresses, coats and more.
“I stay busy, and it’s hard work, but it doesn’t seem that hard,” Morgan says. “It’s kind of like having a lot of friends come over.”
Her elegant jewelry glimmers as she turns her head toward racks of clothes, explaining that she handpicks all the fabrics used and works only by appointment. Morgan also coordinates numerous fashion shows for different organizations and uses their members as models. She even helped the late Mary Kay Ash put together glamorous outfits.
The best part for Morgan is that she is back doing what she loves to do — working with women and making them feel good about themselves.
“I love to see people blossom,” Morgan says. “It’s like big girls playing dress up.”
Nancy Zally, Bread dough ornaments
Nancy Zally. Photo by Can Türkyilmaz
Price range: $15-$32
Website: camillescreationsinc.com
When Nancy Zally started making bread dough ornaments, she didn’t know the miniature people she was fashioning needed extra pieces for their necks, so what resulted were little blobs of figures, she says with a smirk.
“I first sold them for really cheap,” she says.
Now, Zally, who sells her ornaments out of Camille’s Creations on West Lovers Lane, makes a variety of figures, from Hockaday cheerleaders to cowboy Santas, with wispy handwriting and elaborate detail — and they all have necks (except for the snowmen).
Zally first began crafting ornaments in 1979 when she had her second child.
“I needed to make some money and didn’t want to get a job,” she says.
While at a shopping center, she saw the traditional craft and told herself, “I can do that,” so she went home, found a recipe, and the forming began.
Zally made the ornaments at home, something she still does to this day, with a little help from her daughter, Gretchen Crichton. Zally molds and bakes the tiny figures, and her daughter paints on the bright colors. When that’s done, she dunks the little people in a “polyurethane-type” glaze in her laundry room and blow-dries them to remove any bubbles.
“I can do it whenever I feel like it — at the crack of dawn or late at night.”
Though she makes 20 to 30 ornaments a day, Zally still finds it relaxing, with the exception of the holidays when the orders pile up from her biggest clients — housewives, she says.
Most ornaments run $17.50 each. She can also use family photos to customize ornaments, and those cost more, she says. Zally works Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at Camille’s, where her ornaments are exclusively sold.
“I know I’ll work until at least 70 — I like money,” she says with a chuckle.
