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Shop locally at Skull Creek Boutique

Rhonda Stearns
for Tri-State Livestock News

If you stop in Newcastle you might find all of your Christmas shopping needs under one roof.

Skull Creek Boutique, housed in one of Main Street’s oldestb commercial buildings is packed with an eclectic collection of goods and gifts.

Rancher and mother Emily (Geier) Hartinger operates the enterprise, along with a full time photography business.



There’s quality and variety in custom furniture, acrylic pour paintings, horseshoe and metal art, plus every kind of woodwork – plaques, clocks, hand cut, lazer cut; shelves, signs, birdhouses, pens, winestoppers, cribbage boards, even hand-crafted toy ranch corrals for cowboy kids. There’s clothing of every variety and style to suit men, women, babies, children – even dolls. The variety encompasses handmade, Crazy Train, CC Beanies, Cowgirl Tuff, Wyo Clothing, embroidered jeans, wild rags, custom caps, beaded hat bands, bags, purses and boutique.

Food fans will love jellies and jams, Indiana Maple Syrup, soup and dip mixes, Wyoming BBQ sauce, Dakota’s Best snacks and Bucking Beans coffee, roasted in Wyoming! Jewelry comes in Western, copper, silver, wire-wrapped-stone, essential oil, handcrafted, or as hand beaded hair accessories. You’ll find coasters, cutting boards, homemade greeting cards, books by local authors, Children’s Books, folded book designs, metal signs, Senegence makeup, Perfect Posh bath and lotion, Color Street Nails, goat’s milk lotion and soap, sugar scrubs, candles, wax melts, crochet items, rocks, and lots of Collectibles.



Vendors provide much of the inventory, and they enjoy the experience as much as the shoppers. Lacey Sloan, who has her Young Living/All-Natural booth there, commented, “It’s been great to have an avenue to provide convenient products to the community. Being part of the Boutique is a great opportunity.”

Hartinger opened Skull Creek Studio to provide photography services in January of 2016. A good friend, Katie Cummings, had inspired her to learn photography and when Katie died unexpectedly, Hartinger’s interest slowed for a while.

“I didn’t pursue photography as a business for a few years after her passing because it was a tough thing for me to face emotionally. We’d rodeoed together, and were close as kids and in high school, but had grown apart in the time nearer her passing. It took me a while…starting into a business she was so passionate about felt a little like betraying her…now it makes me feel close to her,” she says. “I utilize a lot of skills I learned from her.”

Emily loves wildlife and all else that makes Wyoming’s outdoors beautiful. She prefers to ‘shoot people’ outdoors…incorporating some of America’s best scenery and historic places as backgrounds.

“Late in 2017, I moved my studio into a building on Main Street that was bigger than I needed,” Emily says. Skull Creek Studio, a lovely space where truly unique photos are perfected – anchored that building, while the gal behind the camera looked beyond.

“I approached my friend Rebecca Bennett with Rustic Buck Designs about sharing the space with me. It just blew up from there!” she says. Encouraging more social, entrepreneurial and artistic people to establish personal niches of small treasures, in whatever nooks and crannies they chose, Emily remembers, “We added a few more friends with handcrafted items at that place; then regretfully began turning people away, for lack of space.”

Matt Ramsey approached her, the summer of 2018, about moving across the street and into the larger historic store.

Emily says she laughed, “There’s no way I could fill up that building! Then I started putting together a list of possible vendors, finding a lot who said ‘yes!’” Her spacious studio now comfortably shares the area with around 55 vendors; and shoppers visiting Skull Creek Boutique should be warned to arrive armed with their entire gift list and ample time, or risk missing real treasure!