It’s not a perfume-related story with a lot of the holiday-appropriate pictures, a riddle in the end and a perfume draw (feel free to jump there directly any time)

***

The Story

Have you ever made your own holiday/Christmas ornaments – either when you were little or with your own kids?

Even though I always loved New Year and decorated my tree, the only attempt at making my own ornament I remember was when, following some TV show instructions, I wrapped a couple of walnuts in foil.

Many-many years later having moved to the U.S., one day after I got over the initial shock and an overwhelming desire to ask for an asylum in a craft store (growing up we had nothing even close to that!), I just couldn’t pass by the plain glass ornaments and a kit for decorating them.

***

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

Though I always liked drawing and painting, I’ve never been good at it. But I had that idea in my head… If I were to paint a window on a plain glass ornament, it would naturally have glass in it and will be see-through. So I painted a cat sitting in a window and looking at the pine tree outside. That tree I painted on the opposite side of the ball.

***

***

Then I kept adding details – a Christmas tree with gifts under it, a TV, a vase with flowers, a painting on the wall, snow, trees – and ended up with half of the ornament representing inside of the house and half – outside.

***

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

I was very happy with the result but my creative fervor hadn’t subsided: I wanted more! So I bought more ornaments and brought them, the one I’d created (as inspiration) and the kit to the office; and persuaded 10-12 of my co-workers to participate. The most enthusiastic of us made 2-3 ornaments each. We got a small tree and decorated it with all 20 ornaments we created. The tree itself was reminiscent of a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree but we were extremely pleased with the decorations – and thus the tradition was born.

These are all the ornaments we created that first year:

***

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

From the next year and going forward the tradition was to make new ornaments, put them on the best spots on the tree and then add all the ornaments lovingly saved from the previous years. Around Thanksgiving co-workers would start asking me: “What are we going to do for the ornaments this year?” Over the next several years we went through many different mediums – wood, metal, plaster, foam and felt, every next year involving more and more people. Then I decided to go the second round (for the new co-workers it was their first) – again glass, wood and metal. And being a multi-cultural company, we introduced many not-that-christmas-specific elements, such as menorah or pop-culture-themed ornaments.

Taking you through about 200 ornaments created in those years would be probably too much, so for the illustration here are just the ornaments I made using the materials I mentioned:

***

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

Since most of the ornaments were pre-made as something holiday-traditional, for a while we were limiting ourselves to decorating and adorning them with ribbons, glitter and sequins. But then we started looking “outside the box” transforming the blanks into something new, not the way they were intended to be decorated:

***

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

Thirteen years later we decorate a 9-feet Christmas tree choosing our favorites from more than 300 ornaments. Some people who created them had left the company years ago; some has just finished their ornament No 13 (+). As you can imagine, many of the ornaments bring good memories as we hang them on the tree, remembering who and when created each of them.

The Riddle

For the last three years we went even further in the creative approach: we would choose some more or less uniform object and use it as a blank canvas for our creativity. Look at the ornaments: all of them within each of the three sets were created from the same object.

2013

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

2014

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

2015

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

***

Can you guess what was used as a medium for each year?

The Draw

It’s a Holiday Draw so to be entered you do not need to guess correctly. Actually, you do not need to guess at all – if you do not feel like doing that (and vice-versa: you can guess even if you’re not interested in the draw).

To be in the draw, all you need to do is to tell me: should Rusty pick your name in a random draw, which one from the list below would you like to get?

– Bottega Veneta Bottega Veneta Eau de Parfum (0.25 oz/7.5 ml mini bottle)

– Serge Lutens Laine de Verre (0.16 oz/5 ml mini bottle)

– Jasques Saint Pres Isa (0.5 oz/15 ml travel bottle)

– Serge Lutens Chergui (0.16 oz/5 ml mini bottle)

– Jo Malone Peone & Blush Suede (0.3 oz/9ml travel bottle)

The draw is open to everybody (with the usual fine print of knowing your country’s postal restrictions, possible loss/damage in transit, etc.) until the end of 2015. I’ll announce results as soon as I manage to interest Rusty in helping me with choosing the winner.

***

Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers!

 

Images: my own