The Wildwood Cottage was created out of my love for art, painting and stenciling. I enjoy learning new crafts and have taken various classes over the years. I've taken classes on faux finishing, one stroke painting, stenciling and stained glass.
I purchased a Bren Professional Stencil Cutting Machine so that I could create my own custom designed decorative lettering stencils. My Bren Professional stencil cutting machine uses a carbide blade and 500 pounds of down force to cut stencils. It's amazingly fast, accurate and a real time saver for me.
We've been making unique crafts for years. We started out selling to family and friends and eventually selling at craft shows. However since we wanted to focus our efforts on our custom stencil business (craft shows are also very time consuming ) we decided to add many of our unique craft projects to our website for everyone to enjoy.
Where did the name Wildwood Cottage come from ?
The name Wildwood comes from some of the history of the surrounding area.The Wildwood Cottage is located in beautiful White Bear Lake Minnesota. There once was an amusement park named Wildwood on the shores of White Bear Lake back in the 1920's. The Wildwood amusement park was the highlight of the area at that time. The Wildwood Cottage just seemed like the perfect name for our company.
When I'm not designing stencils, shipping an order or trying out a new craft, you'll find me in one of my many gardens. The Wildwood Cottage is surrounded by a variety of gorgeous perennial gardens. I have a variety of plants from sun loving lilies, hibiscus and wildflowers to shade loving hostas, astilbe and sedum. My favorite gardens are my shade gardens because they're full of a variety of different types of hostas.
I've been collecting hostas for about 10 years and now have over 300 hostas scattered throughout my gardens. Hostas are very hardy (which is a must for northern gardens) and come in an assortment of colors such as white, bright green, dark green, blue, and varigated. Hostas are the perfect plant for brightening up a shady garden.
