Meet Tina

Hi, and welcome to A Personal Place.

A Personalised Place is a small family-run personalised Christmas ornament business which I started  in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

During a vacation to California I purchased a bread dough ornament and had it personalised. The following year when it came time to decorate the tree, I noticed the dough ornament had crumbled. It was when I decided to start making my own personalised ornaments using polymer clay.

Plenty of trial and error ensued, but I had high expectations of what  Christmas ornaments should look like. This was over 15 years ago, and the business travelled with me when my family and I moved to Christchurch, New Zealand.

My kiwi friends said personalised ornaments would never take off here and I proved them wrong. I developed a Kiwiana line and a souvenir line and now my  kiwis fly all around the world. Kiwis  from all over New Zealand have accepted and embraced me and have made my business a success today.

When the earth quake hit last September I was so upset as the quake hit a week before my biggest craft show of the year. After checked on my family I ran to my craft room expecting to find a year of all my hard work gone. To my delight no ornaments were harmed during the quake. I now market my ornaments as earth quake tested to 7.3.