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The second mailing that the national Keepsake Ornament Club sent to Local Clubs is currently being delivered to Club Sponsors/Club Contacts. The shipment contains: the May 2012 issue of Collectively Speaking*, a Keepsake Trivia game and an Artist Spotlight DVD (see transcription below). This DVD was made by several of the Keepsake Studio Artists including: Nina Aubé, Tracy Larsen, Ken Crow, Tammy Haddix and Nello Williams. On the DVD each artist talks about one of their favorite ornaments the 2012 Dream Book.

Artist Spotlight DVD Transcript
(Edited for clarity)

Cookie Cutter Christmas
Artist: Nina Aubé

“Ever since I was a little girl, I loved little, tiny things. I loved little dolls, little animals—I grew up in an apartment, so the only kind of pet we could have were gerbils [and] hamsters. I just love little things. I used to make clothes for them. I just like recreating the small fantasy world for these little animals of mine. That’s what inspired this ornament, to create that fantasy child world again.

The idea of putting them into cookie cutters—I also love to bake.  I have my grandmother’s old aluminum cookie cutters. So that inspired me too. I thought ‘wouldn’t it be really cool to like create a scene inside these old cookie cutters?’ This was based on an ornament that was not considered to be a series and this is the ornament.”

“It’s a little mouse inside a star shaped cookie cutter. They didn’t make very many of these, I think only like 2,000 or something. They sold really well and people loved it. Based on the popularity of this ornament they decided we should make this a series. I was like ‘yeah!’ because I have lots of ideas for it.  That’s how the first in the series came into being.”

“This guy is in a little Christmas tree cookie cutter and he’s sledding down an icing hill and he is on a little ice cream sandwich with candy cane runners. There’s lollipop trees, ice cream cone mountains and gumdrop and chocolate little bushes. He is having a grand time.”

“I sculpt by hand. I am one of the dinosaurs. I still sculpt in clay. I think I am the only one in the studio who does. Most of the other artists sculpt in either wax or do it digitally. Part of this ornament was done digitally. I gave a drawing to one of our production design artists, Orville Wilson, he made the cookie cutter shape for me digitally, we output it and then I sculpted in clay inside. I used dental tools, handmade tools and magnifiers. You have to have a lot of patience but I love it.”

“I don’t know if I am supposed to give any hints but the next—I just finished sculpting the second in the series and it’s another little mouse. It’s always going to be a little mouse. He is in a heart shape and he’s has something to do with writing a letter to Santa. I don’t know if I can say that but I did so there you go.”

Holiday Lighthouse
Artist: Tracy Larsen

“John [‘Collin’] Francis did the first several ornaments in the Lighthouse [Greetings] series that we had done a few years back. They were just terrific little pieces of artwork, allot of fun. He retired and we had to end the series, but almost immediately we started talking about, now what can we do with lighthouses.”

“This particular ornament, that’s the first in the series, was inspired by some west coast lighthouses, particularly those in Oregon. I look at books and get on the internet and do research. It’s fun to learn the history of different lighthouses. You can get in there and there’s lots of ghost stories about lighthouses. I just love neat and different architecture and lighthouses really provide a beauty that you just don’t find in today’s architecture. The series, from this one on (being the first of the series), will have the magic-cord technology. So you’ll be able to use those magic-cords for years to come. They [The lighthouses] will probably continue with Santa and the polar bear. The polar bear offers different opportunities to engage Santa in. Now some teased that he [The polar bear] is just waiting for Santa to come down and then he’s gonna eat him, but I don’t think that was my intention at all.”

“I have already sculpted 2013’s ornament. It’s in production. I’ll tell you one thing, it has a candy cane stripe going up like Cape Hatteras, there in one of the tall towers there in North Carolina. That’s a design element. Hopefully I won’t get in trouble for sharing that.”

Magician Mickey
Artist: Ken Crow

“I’m the lucky guy that gets to work on this ornament, which is the first in series. For me, as an artists, it’s like living a dream because I always wanted the be a Disney animator, or to animate Disney things. Through Hallmark Cards, I got to work on a Mickey Mouse. He’s in an animated position, and he’s a series. That means there is more of them to come. This series is going to be built around—they call them shorts, Mickey Mouse cartoons, and most of them were made in the 1930’s.”

“This one was made in 1937. When I got to work on this—designing it, I got to watch the movie over and over in my work area. I got to watch a Disney cartoon at work and I studied and studied it. What’s the most appealing single image I could create as a Keepsake ornament. This is what we rested on, not just me but there’s a team. And just why? Because it looks like the best moment. It has lots of animation and it would look good in a series if there were more of them—Things to look for are: the name of the movie on one foot and the copyright on the other. When I work on an ornament like a Disney character, there are style guides and I keep this right in front of me when I’m working. This style guide actually shows the dos and don’t s, what’s correct and what’s incorrect. I can tell you exactly how many stripes and the angles. I can tell you about the angle of his nose or the shape of his eyes, how close they are together. At this moment, I’m working on the second in the series. I can’t tell you too much, but maybe one hint is that he has a feather in his hat. Is that too much? gulp! But if your real into Mickey Mouse and you study it and you look for a feather, you might  guess what the next one is. I get joy every time I work on one of these things. It’s like a little kid living a dream.”

Trimming the Tree
Artist: Tammy Haddix

“This is Trimming the Tree, Frosty Friends ornament, and is a magic-cord ornament.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever worked on one [Magic-cord ornament] so it was really fun, to get to do music and lights that really work with the song—it’s in sync with it, it’s just—it’s really quite magical. Well, on this one I decided it would be fun to use allot of frosty’s friends, to include more animals than we’ve done in one ornament— so this is my opportunity to try to include as many as I could. The base gave me the opportunity to do that. Usually if there’s an underwater creature, it’s peaking up through the ice—on Frosty, so you just see, part of him. So this was a chance to do the whole body of the creatures—such as the whale or the seal and see them swimming under the water and have two different environments like above ground environment and the under water environment.”

“Each time you start an ornament, it’s different; what things you decide to put in it or what inspires you at that moment. I like to add mixed materials to the ornament and so that’s where the trim came from, the beaded trim—so really wanted to look like, Frosty was decorating the tree, not just the animals (are holding ornaments so they’re not really—they’re just interacting with the tree just a little bit). But I really wanted it to look like he was decorating it for sure, so he has a beaded garland that he is adding to it. The light and sound and the magic-cord ornaments was really fun and exciting because it was neat to: see how long of a song we could do and how much of a light show we could create. So, yeah, if I get the opportunity to do another magic-cord [Ornament] I’d definitely would jump on the chance.”

Ready! Set! Snow!
Artist: Nello Williams

We have a number of people in the studio who do licensed, even Disney, but I have been doing Mickey for a long time, almost all my career her at Hallmark.

In this case, the part that I did was, I did the digital models of each of the characters. The programs we use are basically the same types of programs that are used in making animated films, PIXAR and the SHREK movies—those types of things. We’re using some of those programs to do the ornaments now. We do have machines that will output, these digital sculpts so we can hold it in our hand even before we send it to our vendors. When I find I do get to see the ornament in real form, it’s really pretty exciting. That’s the culmination of the process. We had to think about positioning; how they would go together, so that when we did assemble them nobody was sticking their arm through the next character in front of them, so that each could be assembled in a different way. So they did have to fit a certain space in front and behind them, other than that it was just trying to capture the expressions of someone having fun or the different reactions that these characters do have to, you know the thrill of going down a snow covered hill in a toboggan. I think my favorite character in this group has always been Mickey, he’s the leader, he’s the one who really sets the tone for everybody else. You wouldn’t necessarily put Mickey in the same situation that you might put Donald for an individual ornament or for a certain scene or concept, knowing them certainly helps us when I concept and sculpt an ornament that kind of philosophical debate does happen when we we’re designing these ornaments. Disney’s certainly thinks about it when we propose an idea so we do have to think about that, to be true to the characters.

* Collectively Speaking – The local club newsletter for the Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Club.