Keepsake Artist Tom Best was asked to share a little more about being a Keepsake Artist. Here’s what he had to say!

Tom: Making a 3-D thing is really cool. You can hold it in your hand and hang it on your tree and it means something. At Christmas when we go to somebody’s house, I make a beeline for their tree. Even if I didn’t work in Keepsakes, I would still do that because growing up, my dad shared with me his love for Christmas and how decorating the tree was a big deal. My mom was in charge of the Christmas cards and making sure things were wrapped beautifully, but the tree was Dad’s domain. It always had to be a live tree, and it had to be perfectly straight—which no tree is—and he’d spend a whole night cussing and bringing in scraps of wood and bricks until he had it propped and angled and weighed down with the bricks and then all covered up with the tree skirt so you couldn’t see it. And he had no patience with the lights. Looking back, it’s comical, but at the time it wasn’t quite so funny!

My dad liked beautiful things—it’s probably where I got my sense for craftsmanship and detail. He was a gruff man, but he had this side to him that appreciated that kind of stuff. Every year for Christmas, he’d get a new glass ornament. He would have loved those ornaments we do now in the Heritage line. He would have been in hog heaven with a tree full of them. In fact, when we broke up his estate after he passed, I got some great ornaments—not that I needed any more!—but I got some neat old glass ones that I remember from when I was a kid. Putting up the tree at Christmas was a really big deal in my family. It was something to look forward to. The favorite toys I ever had were always from under the tree at Christmas.