02 Dec 2025 A creative Christmas

By Phyllis Ormsby 

Linda Martindale will humbly declare she is “not really creative” but a tour of her beautifully appointed west Conway home tells the true story. Every wall, mantel and shelf displays a wide range of her work, from painted canvases to imaginative 3-D creations using found objects, miniatures and repurposed materials, many used in totally unexpected ways. And since the holidays are not far away, Linda’s home is filled with Christmas, done in her own unique style.

“I just love Christmas and always have. As an artist, I’m really crafty,” she said. “I have a lot of Santas. They are so cute!”

Santas are everywhere, from those she captured on canvas to free-standing figures she created. One favorite piece was made from a recycled doll. “I chopped her head off and replaced it with a Santa head,” Linda said with a laugh. “Then I sewed a Santa bag for him for the gifts.”

Although she’s done many works on canvas, including portraits of family, her creativity branched out from the two-dimensional to just about anything she can make with her hands.

You’d never guess, for example, how she made her expensive-looking Wise Men trio. Each started as a styrofoam cone usually used for floral arrangements. Linda repurposed the fur collar off a coat, some antique jewelry and recycled fabrics to make the figures’ richly layered costumes. In her entryway stands an elaborate Old World Santa figure she made. Hidden under his costume? A base made from a plastic bottle filled with clay litter.

Her inspiration comes from many places, from pictures on Instagram to displays in stores. “I’m a big shopper,” she said. “I’ll see something in a store and then think, ‘Hey, I can do that!’ I’m a big garage saler, too.”

On one of her shopping trips, she saw a large mirror with a jewel-encrusted frame. “It had a big price tag on it, too, so I thought I’d make one myself,” she said. She ended up making two of them, one for herself and one for her mom, whom Linda cared for in her home during her final years. “Each mirror had sentimental things for the most part, pieces of Desert Rose dishes that everybody’s mama had, some blue and white pieces of mine, my husband and mine’s watches, all kinds of little sentimental things like that.”

During the holidays, she also displays a large collection of Nativity sets from around the world, some of which she purchased when traveling and some that were gifted to her.

“I’ve been collecting for 60 years now and have been lucky enough to go to market and I frequent after Christmas sales. A lot of this is done on a dime,” Linda said. “For example, this is the first year I haven’t done my own table decorations. I got those at Ye Olde Daisy Shoppe this year because of time constraints, and I’m real happy with them.”

Linda’s favorite part of her Christmas decorations are the trees. “I just love them,” she said. “They have so many memory ornaments and I love making them pretty.” This year, she said she was thankful to have decorating help from her grandson Jake Hill, her daughter Kay Lynn and her daughter-in-law Stefanie Martindale. “It’s gotten to be a lot for me to do on my own,” she said.

Linda, who grew up in Magnolia (Columbia County), was in high school when she took her first art lessons. She minored in art at what is now Southern Arkansas University, where she met her husband, Jim. His job with Entergy took them to 11 different towns, where they lived in 19 different homes during his career, and in each new town, Linda sought out someone to give her more art lessons. She also taught elementary school in six of those towns. “I taught kindergarten to third grade, so I always incorporated art into it,” she said.

Linda has also poured her love of decorating and art into vendor booths filled with antiques and home decor. Previously, she had a booth at Fabulous Finds when she lived in Little Rock; today she has a booth at the Painted Pig in Conway. She’s even held classes in her home, teaching friends and neighbors how to recreate her decoupaged pumpkins. “Most of them had never done any crafts at all,” Linda said. “They all seemed to just love it. Sometimes all you need is a little push and it makes you want to do other things.”