Frontgate Holiday Designers: Lisa Kelechava

Lisa Kelechava and her company, Joy To The World (JTTW), will celebrate 10 years in business in 2008, but she's just getting started with ground-breaking holiday ornaments and festive Christmas décor.

"We have created some very exciting and exclusive pieces for Frontgate this year," Lisa says. "We like to come up with concepts that have never been done before. We're using ornaments in non-traditional ways to create centerpieces, table runners, and tabletop presentations."

Lisa's company specializes in ornaments and Santas with a more contemporary style, although she also offers some traditional holiday fare. Lisa specializes in using intense colors to ensure her holiday ornaments "really pop" when hung on a Christmas tree.

"We custom mix all of our colors and glitters, so you'll see quite a different look on our ornaments. We also strive for great detail, whether it's on our molds or in the decoration."

"The Large Trumpeting Santas [shown at left] are ground-breaking designs," Lisa says. "The Santa is a wonderful centerpiece, and can be used in so many different decorating applications."

The Glitterazzi Santa is another unique addition. Each has actual gem stones (garnets, rubies, fresh water pearls, etc.), which was an industry first. Lisa describes this technique as "painting with glitter", which is extremely hard to master.

Prior to starting Joy to the World, Lisa was a creative director in the television industry. Since then, she has worked at developing her craft. Today, her personal style is to branch out from traditional designs. Some of her most well-received pieces have used non-traditional colorations.

Lisa prefers to create her designs directly on the glass, although sometimes she will sketch out an idea. The entire manufacturing process is done by hand, so it takes about a week to make each ornament.

For almost 10 years, Lisa has worked with the Komozja Factory, a family-owned, multi-generational facility, to create her holiday decorations. This well-known Polish glass factory has a reputation of creating the best glass ornaments in the world.

Lisa adds that many of her ornaments are "little pieces of art" that can be used as decorative focal points in the home year-round. "You can use ornaments for different touches throughout a home, and not just on trees. We even use our ornaments as place card holders because they come with a double loop in the cap that lets you slip a place card in, which can really dress up a dinner table. A lot of our ornaments actually sit or stand on their own, and that also provides a lot of design flexibility."

Lisa has always loved Christmas. "We always collected ornaments for our family tree growing up in Pennsylvania," she says. "I always added that one special ornament to my collection every year. I really hope people collect JTTW ornaments like I always had — that they add a JTTW ornament to their collection each year as the new and special piece they'll keep forever."