Ballet Gift Shop, now in it’s 3rd year, is a small company situated at the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains in Englewood, Colorado. With the goal of helping ballet companies raise money for their performances, Ballet Gift Shop is dedicated to providing quality ornaments at low prices so that ballet companies can truly profit.

Michael and Cheryl Caston are the owners, designers, and artists behind BalletGiftShop.com. Cheryl has many years of experience in Ballet and has performed in a large variety of performances. Her close knowledge of ballet as an art form has given the ornament designs at Ballet Gift Shop a true authenticity of form and costume. Michael and Cheryl obtained Masters Degrees in Product Design at one of the top universities in the nation for design.

It was while in their last year of the program that Cheryl’s mother, Maxine, came to them with a request. Maxine was the volunteer fundraising coordinator for the ballet company that Cheryl used to dance with. She wanted Cheryl and Michael to design ornaments that were true to the nature and form of ballet and that could be manufactured here in the U.S.A. and resold for fundraising.

Many of the ballet ornaments already on the market were low quality and falling very short of actually capturing the true art of ballet. They were likely designed by someone who had never performed in ballet, maybe never even attended a performance, and thus, not familiar with appropriate posture and poses that are most important to ballet performances.

With a desire to keep business in America, Michael and Cheryl took on the challenge and began to test different materials and processes for ornament manufacturing. Their initial designs were well received by the ballet community as very detailed and accurate depictions of ballet performances. What started as ornament designs for 36 main characters from the Nutcracker Ballet, has grown to include over 100 different character designs and 12 different product lines. Ballet Gift Shop has expanded to include ornament designs for more dance styles to accompany ballet, such as: Jazz ornaments, Tap Dance ornaments, Irish Step ornaments, and Flamenco ornaments. In the last three years, Ballet Gift Shop has helped raise thousands of dollars for ballet performances by selling the dance ornaments in bulk to dance companies. Very popular at dance recitals and ballet performances, the laser engraved dance ornaments make a great fundraising project for dance schools and dance companies.

Article and images used with permission from BalletGiftShop.com