Entrant's Name
Jen C.

Designer(s)
Jennifer Chabot

Hand-Crafted Decorations
Yes

Story/Message
I have been designing trees for Ann's Place Tree Festival at varying levels since the 2nd year of the event. Coming up with new and original themes has always been an exciting challenge. A couple of years ago a good friend (who is also very creative), came across "shrink paper" online and a design idea was born (though never executed)!

Growing up in the 1970's- 80's, a favorite activity with family and friends was making "Shrinky Dinks". (For anyone who doesn't know what they were/are, it is a special type of transparent plastic paper that you would trace or draw freehand on, cut out and bake in the oven. It would transform the piece to 1/3 of the original size and make it into a thick hard plastic).

Fast forward to spring of 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic. As everything was essentially shut down we knew the timing was suited perfectly to resurrect the idea. We both worked virtually on our own creations with our "2020 trees" in mind.

Each of these ornaments was made by printing out 8X10 coloring book pages and filled in with sharpie markers. Each ornament took approximately 2-3 hours to complete.

Growing up, the most practical use for this paper was making "keychains". Little did I know that 40 years later they would become "ornaments" and provide such a pretty end result as well as a "positive" outcome from such unprecedented times!

Happy Holidays!