About Us

Michael and Cheryl Caston are the owners, designers, and artists behind Nutcracker-Gifts.com and BalletGiftShop.com. Cheryl has many years of experience in ballet and has performed in a variety of performances. Her close knowledge of ballet as an art form has given the ornament designs at Nutcracker-Gifts.com a true authenticity of form, line, and costume. Michael and Cheryl obtained Master’s 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 asked 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 "Made in China" 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 participated in ballet performances, maybe never even attended a performance, and thus, not familiar with appropriate posture and poses that are most important to ballet technique.

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 first thought was making a mold out of silicon for casting resin ornaments, but decided it was too time consuming and thus, the end product would cost too much for ballet companies to use for fundraising. When they happened upon a very large pile of oak and poplar veneer, they realized that they could glue the veneers together to make their very own homemade plywood that could be laser etched. They quickly learned how to engineer plywood and operate a laser engraver and were able to translate their drawings of dancers into new laser etched ornaments. The use of the laser engraver allows them to offer free customization on every ornament that they manufacture. 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 (see our Retired Ornaments), has grown to include over 100 different character designs from 5 ballet performances and 12 different product lines. Nutcracker-Gifts.com and BalletGiftShop.com have expanded to include product designs for more dance styles including: ballet, Jazz, Tap, Irish Step, and Flamenco. Nutcracker-Gifts.com has helped raise thousands of dollars for ballet performances.

With the success of Nutcracker-Gifts.com and BalletGiftShop.com, Michael and Cheryl started another company, Critter Gift Shop, with the goal of helping non-profit animal rescues raise money for the care and placement of lost or abandoned pets. Critter Gift Shop creates ornaments and other products intended for resale by animal rescue groups.