Just Mauied

Won't this be a darling gift personalized for a couple who just got married in Hawaii! Maui that is. When it's an ornament we'll put names on their tummies and Just Mauied with the date inside the little heart. We make other ornaments for weddings, and we make ornaments for souveniers of tropical vacations so this new design will be great for either occasion.

New Family Tree ornament

Here's a drawing of one of our new designs
for 2008. It's a Family Tree because you can
personalize each little character on the tree with
a family member's name. You can see our last
minute change - a bigger star on the top. We think the year, 2008 will look cute up there and
our customers can put a family name or a phrase
on the white base. We're thinking of doing some similar products using a dog and a cat. We'll see how the sample comes out. This will be a nice addition to our other Family ornaments.

Coming up with New Products each Spring

Every Spring we have an opportunity to take a look at our fabulous selection of Christmas designs and do our inventory and talk about what our customers loved this last year! Then we plan a nice selection of new ornaments that will really compliment our current ones and have somthing fresh and new for everyone who has bought year after year.

Believe me, after 37 years in the Christmas ornament business it is a challenge each year to think of original ideas! And all of our ideas are ORIGINAL - and designed by Dorr Eddy, one of our owners and a talented product designer who does all the product development for Calliope Designs as well as working for other companies designing products in ceramics, glass, wood and plastic.

When you see 37 years in business, you must realize, Dorr is an old school designer doing every single product by hand drawing and hand coloring each item. No computer generated designs here!

We start with a list of ideas based on ideas we've had all during the year. He works on tissues and drawing paper and may end up drawing and coloring the design several times before it's in rough draft form. After the draft is completed we evaulate it for subject, color, size, and theme. We check to make sure there are great places to personalize - room for everyone's names and the year and a phrase. We make sure the colors are good on a Christmas tree! We discuss each drawing and how it can be made even cuter, then Dorr does a final rendering. After this is complete we apply any extra touches to the finished art - glitter, silver or gold paint, lettering.

When the artwork is complete it's time to have the samples made up to make sure the ornament is perfect! Here are some images of new ideas we have for 2008: