Mother’s Day is big business. We have assembled ideas from eight studios allowing you to guide your customers to unique and affordable gifts that will be sure to send a message about how much they care.

“Color Me Happy Pitcher” and “Color Me Happy Ice Tea Glass” by Beth Keenan of Funktini.

Eloise Cotton has done it all. With jobs ranging from bartender to church organist, the only thing that’s remained constant is her love of glass. After a stint demonstrating furnace glass blowing at Magic Mountain theme park in Los Angeles, she turned to the profession full-time, opening First Glass in Martinez, Calif. Scent bottles became a specialty after she realized that no one else had them available at retail for under $100. “Several years ago I noticed there was a niche for perfume bottles, and after all this time my scent bottle designs still fit that niche,” she explains.

Satin Silk-Screened Scarves by Kavita Singh of Painted Silks by Kavita.

The influence of Kavita Singh‘s home base in Saratoga, Calif., can readily be seen in her bold and colorful handpainted scarves. First introduced to fabrics during an apprenticeship in Paris, she developed her own technique for painting silk when she returned to the U.S. Unlike most silks, her pieces are colorfast, shrink resistant and hand washable. Inspired by nature, lilies, orchids and irises are frequent subjects in her work.

“Peapod Necklace” by Kiona van Rhee-Wilson of Lucky Accessories

Artist Kiona van Rhee-Wilson knows a thing or two about beauty. A former model, she turned to jewelry making full-time in 2003 with her company Lucky Accessories based in Raleigh, N.C. “So much about fashion is about what’s ‘in’ now,” she says. “I wanted to ignore trends and just make what feels natural, what inspires me in the moment.” Her most popular pieces, called “Peas in a Pod,” use pearls lined up and bracketed in sterling silver. Perfect for Mother’s Day, the number of pearls can easily correspond to the number of children a woman has.

“Wish Box 4” by Jim and Tori Mullan of Mullanium Jewelry & Songbird Collection.

“My goal is to design and create unique glassware and home decor that can be used in everyday life,” says Beth Keenan of Funktini Art. Since 2001, Keenan has been using her love of color and bold statements to create funky handpainted stemware. The former potter found inspiration when spotting a plain martini glass with a strange stem and thinking that it needed something to make it even more unique. A decade later, she continues to paint glassware with thermo-hardening, permanent and durable paint out of her Westlake, Ohio studio. “The most frequent compliment I get from customers is that Funktini Art is full of life and whenever they see the pieces they’ve bought, it makes them smile,” she says.

“Large Pendant” by Sue Savage of Studio Picea.

A mutual love of old watches, vintage jewelry and antiques first brought Jim and Tori Mullan together at a 1985 art show. A mixed-media artist and jewelry maker, respectively, they combined both their lives and their individual talents to create Mullanium Jewelry & Songbird Collection in Pompano Beach, Fla. One of the couple’s most popular items is the wish box. Each box is handpainted, embellished with nature themes and riveted together, awaiting a wish.

Hand-crocheted Mini Earrings with Freshwater Pearl by Randi Chervitz of Uncommon Threads Jewelry.

Randi Chervitz of Uncommon Threads Jewelry first picked up her grandmother’s crochet hook while taking a metalsmithing class in college. Combining her love of knitting and jewelry making, she turned to crocheting silver to make wearable pieces of art from her studio in Saint Louis, Mo. “Through my techniques, I examine formal artistic concepts such as line quality, pattern, composition and wearability in jewelry,” she says.

Rose Paperweight by Scott Hartley of Infinity Art Glass.

As a young child, Scott Hartley surrounded himself with art—he painted, drew and experimented with every type of medium he could get his hands on. In college, however, he turned his focus to science, earning a degree in biology. After a stint as a high school teacher, he realized that the artistic impulse had never left him. “There was something missing in my life, and it was art,” he says. Hartley opted to combine his two loves of science and art and opened Infinity Art Glass in Benton, Kan. “My work is hard, but it is by far the most rewarding work that I have ever done.”

“My philosophy is to create elements of personal adornment emitting surprise and whimsy with attention to detail and craftsmanship,” explains Sue Savage of Studio Picea. Based in Petersburg, Alaska, her jewelry is inspired by colors, textures and patterns in nature. Marred and hand-sliced, each piece of jewelry is created from polymer and further embellished through drawing, riveting and lacing, then mounted on rhodium-plated pewter.

Matt Thomas was introduced to woodworking by his father when he was 14. What started out as projects to meet his mother’s needs for their new West Virginia home morphed into small furniture.

A couple of years later, his parents urged him to participate in a jury session at Tamarack: The Best of West Virginia’s retail gallery in Beckley. “I was one of the youngest artisans to have my products there,” Thomas says.

What’s better? None of his hard work was going unnoticed. Jeff Fetty, a local blacksmith and Tamarack juror, invited Thomas to apprentice at his shop. From 1998 to 2002, Thomas slowly increased his skills and responsibilities, eventually contributing design ideas to the studio’s custom fireplace screens, tables and outdoor sculptures. “This experience opened my eyes and mind,” he says.

But Thomas is extraordinarily practical. Instead of continuing on with Fetty or branching out into his own studio, he pursued general contracting work to support his wife, and later his family.

Thomas / work launched in 2002 as a general contracting business and is now extended to Thomas’s newest venture—a line of fine furniture lovingly crafted from cherry and walnut and often accented with organic iron designs.

The scale of his work has been limited by the size of his Shock, W.Va., studio—a 12×20-foot space on his family’s property—but he hopes to complete a new, significantly larger, studio space this winter.

Each design begins as a sketch, and is adapted to three-dimensions on the computer so Thomas can view it from all angles. From there, he creates a prototype (many of which end up as gifts to his wife Terri). Successful pieces are added to one of Thomas’s three lines: the traditional line features Shaker-inspired pieces; the contemporary Truffle line showcases textured walnut; and the hybrid line refers to pieces that merge wood with iron.

When his new studio is completed, Thomas plans to tackle two queen-sized bed commissions. For now, he’s ironing out a chess table, bedside jewelry chest and a coat stand that accommodates umbrellas.

“I want people to appreciate my furniture’s timeless design,” Thomas explains. “And be left to decide which is better, the quality of the woodwork or the ironwork.”

It’s only safe to make one assumption about Christine Kaiser‘s work: don’t make assumptions. Here’s a clue—it’s not clay. She’s been working with wood for more than 20 years, sanding it so smoothly you can’t tell what it’s made of until you pick it up.

Most of Kaiser’s work is made of basswood, a renewable North American hardwood with a straight grain “that carves, sands and takes paint nicely.” She cuts the wood with a band saw, shapes it with a belt sander and adds carved details with a rotary tool. Then she injects life into the work with multiple layers of water-based paints and graphite drawings, achieving a soft finish with layers of matte varnish.

Kaiser hasn’t always created sculpture. She has roots in the fine art world. After earning degrees from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University in Medford, Mass., in the 1970s, Kaiser pursued large figurative wall sculpture and worked at a Boston gallery repairing papier-maché and metal sculpture. “The work was very exacting,” she says. “I got pretty obsessive about it. This was where I learned many of the skills that are used in my work today.”

Kaiser’s current work consists of two main lines: what she calls “Anxieties”—3-inch-high, brightly painted sculptures with wild hair and personalities to match—and limited-edition small sculpture.

The Anxieties never start as sketches—they appear in batches of 10. An extra day in the studio in 2005 led to the first set. “The Anxieties are neuroses, psychoses,” she explains. Each is given unique features, both emulating and suppressing an assigned emotion.

In 2008, when looking for a bridge between her Anxieties and one-of-a-kind sculpture, Kaiser decided to try limited-edition, small-scale sculpture.

The bottom line? “I want my pieces to have multiple meanings and interpretations,” Kaiser says. “The world is complicated; we are complicated in the world.”

View her work at www.christinekaiser.com.