2017 Sneak Peek: Teeny Toy Train
Teeny Toy Train
Miniature
During today’s Keepsake Ornament Artist Live Chat (with Hallmark Master Artist, Ken Crow), Hallmark gave away three miniature ornaments. In doing so they revealed another ornament from the 2017 line.
2017 Reveal: KOC Dream Book Cover (UPDATED)
Here it is! The full cover of the KOC Edition Dream Book coming to members’ mailboxes in April. Now that all fourteen ornaments have been revealed, which ones are on your wish list?
2017 Dream Book Cover
(Top row) Heirloom Santa; (2nd row, left to right) Frosty Fun Decade, Cookie Cutter Christmas;
(3rd row, left to right) Cozy Critters, Pull-String Reindeer, Snow Angel; (4th row, left to right) A
Creature Was Stirring, Christmas Carousel, A Short Snooze; (Bottom row, left to right) Mountain
Bluebird, Honeysuckle, Heirloom Angel, Garland Giggles, Tea Time!.
Heirloom Santa
Frosty Fun Decade
Cookie Cutter Christmas
Cozy Critters
Pull-String Reindeer
Snow Angel
A Creature Was Stirring
Christmas Carousel
A Short Snooze
Mountain Bluebird
Honeysuckle
Heirloom Angel
Garland Giggles
Tea Time!
2017 Reveal: KOC Dream Book Cover
2017 KOC Dream Book Cover
Here is a partial peek at the 2017 Keepsake Ornament Club Edition Dream Book cover. Can you guess what the pixelated ornaments are? Post your best guesses, along with a brief description of what you see, in the comments section of this post. Check back over the next few days as we reveal more of the cover.
The KOC Dream Book will begin arriving in homes in April! To receive a copy either join the KOC or renew your existing membership by March 1, 2017.
NOTE: Individuals who join the KOC or renew their membership after the March 1st cut-off date will not receive the 2017 KOC Dream Book, instead they will receive the 2018 KOC Dream Book next year.
Hallmark Visits Arkansas City to Prepare for 2018 Fire Brigade Ornament
Representatives from Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments were in Arkansas City on Feb. 7 to film, measure and photograph a historic fire engine.
The visit was part of an almost two-year-long process to turn the Arkansas City Fire-EMS Department’s 1932 Buick fire engine into a collectible holiday ornament.
“We are very excited about featuring this unique and beautiful fire engine as an upcoming ornament in our ‘Fire Brigade’ series,” said Michael Brush, editorial strategist for Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments.
The Buick will be released in mid-2018 as part of that year’s ornament series.
Keepsake artist Robert Hurlburt accompanied Brush on the trip to Arkansas City to take the photos and measurements that he will need to start sculpting the miniature ornament.
The eighth fire engine in the Fire Brigade series was modeled after a 1951 Ford fire engine from Leawood. Every year since they’ve tried to find a truck with some kind of interesting background.
The Buick’s history — it started life as a burned-out robbery getaway car — was a perfect fit.
Brush and Hurlburt were met Feb. 7 by City Manager Nick Hernandez, Fire Chief Bobby Wolfe, ACFD Capt. Chet Ranzau and former city commissioner Jean Snell, who helped to restore the Buick.
Director Jennifer Dreiling and cameraman Jake Johnson, with the Hallmark Photography Studio, accompanied the team and filmed the entire visit for an exclusive production video on the Keepsake Ornament Club collectors’ website.
The team also recorded audio of the Buick’s siren and bell. One of those sounds might be included as part of the ornament design, to be heard when a button is pressed.
In what Brush said was a first for the Hallmark crew, they even had a chance to ride in the engine on a short tour of Arkansas City, with ACFD Firefighter -Paramedic Cody Ball in the driver’s seat.
“I think your engine will make a really stunning ornament and I am positive that our ‘Fire Brigade’ series collectors will love it as much as I do,” Brush said.
He said he learned about the Buick five years ago while doing internet research for future projects.
In the next month or so, Hurlburt will start sculpting the ornament digitally. Next, a model will be “grown” on a 3-D printer so that the intricate details can be added by hand.
Once it is finished and painted, the resulting model will be reviewed by the Keepsake Ornaments leadership team to make sure it is up to the series’ standards before it finally is approved for manufacturing.
Once all of those steps are completed, production could start late this year or early next spring.
The ornaments will be available in July 2018.
“Hallmark visits Ark City to prepare for 2018 fire truck ornament.” City of Arkansas City,
https://www.arkcity.org/news_detail_T6_R158.php
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From Getaway Car to Fire Truck
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Featured Artist: Joanne Eschrich
Title:
Master Keepsake Designer
Started at Hallmark:
September 14, 1981
Started at Keepsakes:
January 1996
Hometown:
Westport, Massachusetts
People started collecting Joanne Eschrich’s work when she was in third grade. Of course, the collectors at that time were her classmates. Later, the requests kept coming—in high school fellow classmates asked her to illustrate their biology reports. That was Joanne’s moment of discovery. Unfortunately, it was because the biology teacher didn’t think Joanne should be sharing her talents when it came to homework assignments.
Joanne’s parents encouraged their children to be creative with their playtime. As a young artist being raised on a farm, Joanne had no shortage of animal friends to pose for her. She built dollhouses with her sisters and spaceships with her brothers.
When college came along, Joanne knew she was going to study art. Nothing else was as important. Despite her parents’ attempts to talk her out of her career choice, she persevered and got an interview with Hallmark in her senior year. A job offer soon followed.
Joanne had never even considered sculpting when she was asked to try doing a piece for the Hallmark Merry Miniatures line. She created a basset hound named Sebastian for that assignment and discovered that her sculpting abilities rivaled her illustration talent.
Joanne doesn’t have to look far for inspiration or support for her craft. Her daughters Jamie and Anna are thrilled with what she does, especially when she brings her work home and they get to give their opinions or model for her angels.
“On a few occasions they’ve brought my original sculptures along with the finished ornaments to ‘show and tell’ at their school,” says Joanne. “They also love seeing ‘Mom’ on the back of the ornament boxes at the store.”
Hopeful Father Christmas
Premium Collection
Hopeful Father Christmas
Premium Collection
Joanne Eschrich never expected Poland to feel so much like home.
“It had a very relaxed, friendly atmosphere,” says Joanne, who traveled with a small Hallmark team to several glass-blowing vendors in summer 2015. “The people there were very down to the earth; there are a lot of churches; I loved the food. All of it.” Joanne adds that buildings in the town of Józefów, Poland, are just as quaint as you might imagine. “We were in heaven,” Joanne says. “It was like something out of a storybook.”
At Silverado, a family-owned business in Józefów, original proprietor Jerzy Jaroszyński started his Old World glass-blowing workshop in 1959. His daughters and sons-in-law now run the shop, but Jerzy still trains their artisans and designers.
The family invited the Hallmark team to their home, which was directly behind the shop. “They were so personable,” Joanne says. “It was such a great connection to come from a family-owned business like Hallmark and work with family-owned businesses over there. It was this great understanding.”
Inspired, in large, by what they saw in the showrooms, Joanne and the team began a fruitful collaboration that is now in its second year. For Christmas 2016, Joanne created a Madonna, an angel, an ornate cross and an evergreen inside a glass dome. For 2017, Hopeful Father Christmas is the second ornament that Joanne has tied to her Father Christmas series, which began in 2004. The one she used as inspiration, from 2005, carries the theme of harmony.
“It was a lot of fun working with them to understand what I was trying to connect it with,” Joanne says. They deliberately chose not to go with a more familiar bright-red coated Santa. They wanted something a little more unique, hence the “harmony” Santa holding musical instruments. “We thought the rich burgundy and the gold would play off this off-white glass ball very nicely,” Joanne says.
So after she cropped the character the way she wanted, the artisans at Silverado sculpted the mold, performed the glassblowing, handcrafted the snowflake designs on the back and added a flocked-fabric material to replicate his coat—with Joanne and team providing art direction and input along the way.
“It was fun to see the intricacy of the detail on the glass,” Joanne says. “It’s amazing how accurate they were, how beautiful the details were.”