Artist Interview, Kristina Gaughran – Baby Fairy Messengers
In this exclusive interview Keepsake Studio Artist Kristina Gaughran talks about how the Baby Fairy Messengers came about.
Throwback: Kris’s Penguins
This week’s throwback Thursday takes you back to a story written in 2007 about Kris’s Penguins, one of the most successful unofficial series (if not the most successful) in Keepsake history.
Penguins at Play
Kris’s Penguins
A Playful Spirit Animates These Polar Pals
“Unofficial series” is a phrase you hear often among artists in the Keepsake Ornament Studio. It usually refers to ornaments with a certain theme, style, or characters that are repeated from year to year. They’re not marketed as part of a series and continue only as long as people purchase them and the artist can find inspiration to come up with good ones.
For Kristina Kline, the inspiration for her unofficial penguin series is as abundant as her childhood memories of snowy Iowa winters.
In 2001, Kristina made an ornament of three penguin pals tobogganing. In the following years, she made other penguin ornaments and created distinct personalities for the young penguin play playmates.
There’s the ringleader, the one with her eyes closed, blissed out on the fun, and the plus-size guy. Other characters show up too, like an adorable seal and a baby polar bear. Kristina says the simplified design style of the ornaments lets her emphasize frolic and fun.
She says she knew she was on to something “when people started calling them Kris’s penguins.” An unofficial series had been born.
Beginning with a light clip in 2002’s Topping the Tree, Kristina started adding “simple magic” to each penguin ornament. The penguins in Pals at the Pole (2003) twirl on the ice. In Anything for a Friend (2004), the cute penguin who’s loaned her hat and scarf to a snowman shivers when the ornament is wound up.
Penguins are hot now, commercially speaking—but they always have been popular. Kristina thanks we humans see ourselves in the playful penguin nature. Having grown up on the edge of Osceola, Iowa, she certainly relates to Snow Fort Fun (2006), on which you can pull a knob know to see a snowball fight in action.
“I remember we had one of those red plastic snow block makers that you would pack full of snow,” she smiles. “We’d make big snow forts and have wild snowball fights, just like my little penguins.”
As a series, “Kris’s Penguins” may be unofficial—meaning it could end at any time—but there’s really no end to the playful spirit that inspires it.
Reprint of: “Kris’s Penguins, A Playful Spirit Animates These Polar Pals”
Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments, The Inside Stories From the Artists Who Create Them by John Peterson.
Meet Hallmark Keepsake Artist, Joanne Eschrich
Though not an official Keepsake artist signing event, you can meet Joanne Eschrich and see her new Hallmark Artist Collection faith gifts on May 2 at Ashwina’s Hallmark in Sierra Vista, AZ.
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2015
Ashwina’s Hallmark
Sierra Vista Plaza
2160 E Fry Blvd.
Sierra Vista, AZ 85635
(520) 458-0922
Featured Artist: Ruth Donikowski
Title:
Hallmark Senior Artist
(Retired)
Started at Hallmark:
October 1987
Started at Keepsakes:
January 2008
Hometown:
Born in
Paterson, New Jersey
Grew up in
Fair Lawn, New Jersey
Ruth Donikowski loves working with different kinds of materials—glass, metal, porcelain, fabric—you name it. Learn about the materials she used for some of her favorites in this year’s Hallmark Keepsake Ornament collection, and how the artist’s previous career as a baker helped prepare her.
In 1976, Ruth Donikowski and her husband, who worked for Macy’s, moved to Kansas City from Montclair, New Jersey, where Ruth had been an art teacher. At the time, Ruth took a job making food miniatures in a shop at Crown Center, across from Hallmark headquarters.
She used salt dough to make tiny, collectible replicas of hot dogs and hamburgers, creating dozens at a time. She then sealed the dough with varnish so the little novelty items would be moisture-proof. At the time, Ruth had no way of knowing that skill would come in handy again someday.
“I always wanted to work for Hallmark and thought it would be a distinct possibility,” Ruth said. Shortly after that, she started freelancing for Hallmark and was hired full-time in 1987. She officially became a Keepsake artist in 2008.
One of Ruth’s recent projects afforded her the opportunity to put her culinary skills to work once again, creating miniature treats for the tree this time.
Petite Treat
1 of the Extra Exclusives you can buy with a 2015 Keepsake Ornament Club membership.
Although this one’s made from styrene instead of dough, it still took Ruth on a trip down memory lane. “Just seeing that little cupcake as a miniature—it made me so happy,” she said.
This 2015 KOC exclusive ornament has an added bonus, it is a mini replica of the Christmas Cupcake series ornament to be released in 2016! In the final version of the full-size series piece, the peppermint you see on top will actually be made from two pieces of fabric rolled together and sliced. And what looks more like frosting on this ornament will become individual pieces of “coconut” on the series ornament.
Tasty Tannenbaum
6th in the Christmas Cupcake series
How do you get fabric to look like frosting? Well, this year’s Christmas Cupcake series ornament features a layering technique called “ruching.”
Ruth described it this way: “You run the stitching this way and that way, diagonally, and then there’s a running, gathering stitch straight down through the diagonal lines. And when you pull all of that, it takes it all up, and the fabric ruches.” The technique sounds fairly complex, but that’s just another day in the office for Ruth, who has tremendous skill as a seamstress to go along with her many other design talents.
Like every cupcake in the series, the base or “wrapper” is made of styrene and then painted to coordinate. Then as a finishing touch she added tiny plastic hearts and chunky glitter as the “sprinkles.”
Radiant Cross
One of the things that Ruth loves best about her job is that she gets to work with so many different kinds of materials. And there’s no better proof of that than this elegant cross.
A combination of glass and metal, the cross was inspired by Ruth’s fondness for camphor glass, a material used in a lot of vintage necklaces, pins and other antique jewelry. Ruth actually collects camphor jewelry, so she had plenty of research material to get her started on the project.
She used a vintage camphor piece for inspiration and crafted digital drawings from various angles for the engineers and the manufacturer. The front of the glass is smooth and the back has cut lines that feel like ridges. The edging of the cross is metal. The middle piece is a crystal, and the corners feature metal filigree.
Always Remembered
Another material that Ruth is quite fond of: porcelain. So that was an easy choice for the nautilus shell. “Porcelain is just a beautiful medium,” she said. “It’s very elegant.”
The nautilus is a natural symbol of the infinite, which obviously ties in seamlessly with the intention of the ornament. In small gold lettering, it says: “The ones we’ve lost are found in our memories.”
The ocean theme of the piece also made her think of growing up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and spending summer days on the Jersey Shore, which she visited again just last summer.
“I’ve always had an attraction to the ocean,” Ruth said. “I just love the sea and all the things that come from it.”
She created the mockup from paper clay after researching shells as part of her personal craft projects. “I like to take vintage bottles and solder sea shells onto them,” Ruth said. “Just another tribute to the sea.”
Artist Insights: Toy Store Dreams
Take a walk down memory lane with Tammy Haddix as she recalls her inspiration for this years magic Christmas Window.
“I am so excited for everyone to see the magic Christmas window ornament I created that goes with the KOC membership ornament! The little girl is sculpted to look like me when I was that age! I had a bouncy horse that I loved to ride, so that memory inspired this ornament! This lights up, the rocking horse rocks and it plays “Toyland.” It will be available in the stores for everyone to buy!”
Toy Store Dreams