Ever since first creating our modern website, the focus has been on the collector first and shopping second. Since 1984, Judi Vaillancourt has designed nearly 3,000 chalkware Santas and we have used our website as a resource, a digital library if you will, to document the evolution of her designs.

One of the archives is our “Advanced Chalkware Guide” that appears in every page’s sidebar and allows you to search our collections. For example, if you want to see what we painted in 1984, you simply can search by the date dropdown (and choose “Archive (all) products” if the default, “In Stock products” is selected). If you are only interested in custom designs for Walt Disney World, you can select it from the “custom designs” option. And, if you want to see pieces that are part of series, like our popular Nantucket Santa Series, you can choose that there as well.

Collectors young and old have enjoyed researching their pieces, seeing special information about them, and discovering new pieces. We’re pleased to introduce a new section to our website: Trends & Last Chances.

Trends

Our buyer’s trends page offers insight into what customer are buying—almost in real-time. Every 15-minutes, whenever a chalkware piece is sold (or when an item is put onto our shelves) the piece will be shown on this page (unless it’s no longer available). We regularly are updating our inventory once our artists complete a piece, so this is a great place to check to see what’s available!

Last Chances

The problem with the nature of our business is that we produce very high quality products in low quantities. Typically, our artists paint 5 pieces at a time, so we never are able to keep up with inventory. It’s very often, that we only have one or two pieces in inventory of a specific style. That’s where “last chances” comes into play. Whenever we are down to the last of a specific design, the piece will appear on this page. We’ve opened it up to all products (from Chalkware to selections from our gifts collections). Although we may have these pieces back in stock again soon, we can never tell when. So, if you see something that you like on this page, it may be the last chance for a while!

We continually are trying to update our website to ensure collectors (both series and casual) can find something unique, of interest, and that speaks to their interests. We hope that both Trends and Last Chances can inspire and satisfy those who are looking to shop or simply looking to research the traditions of Vaillancourt Chalkware.