Local saves it for the tree

Deirdre Newman

Most people look at a deodorant bottle as a way to prevent

perspiration. Marie Young looked at a deodorant bottle and found

inspiration.

Young, 87, took two deodorant roll-on balls and fashioned a Santa

Claus Christmas ornament out of it.

And so a hobby was born that has lasted 20-plus years and

decorated more than two decades worth of Christmas trees.

Young has fashioned Christmas ornaments out of eyedropper bottles,

clothespins and Popsicle sticks.

“Most of the stuff is from throwaway junk,” Young said.

Young used to devote her arts and crafts energy to crocheting, but

arthritis robbed her of the ability to spend long periods sewing, so

she turned to a lower-impact activity.

Her daughter, Pat Nattrass, 68, contributes to the recycled

decorations by picking up objects she sees lying around and giving

them to Young.

“She is very talented -- I’m not,” Nattrass said.

Both women also have tons of eyedrop bottles, they said, since

they’ve both had cataracts removed.

“You might as well make something out of it,” Nattrass said.

Young also gets a lot of the parts for her ornaments from her

ophthalmologist. When she told him about her hobby, he gave her even

more eye-drop bottles, Nattrass said.

Young’s ornaments sit on a small tree on a table next to her front

window. One’s fashioned out of a vanilla flavoring bottle with little

balls of tinfoil for hands and legs, while another, which looks like

an elf, has a bottle for a body and nails for arms.

Another is made from a spacer that’s used in packaging ornaments.

Young thought it looked like a birdcage, so she put a little ceramic

bird in it and added it to the tree.

Two clothespins glued together with a red ball of felt are

magically transformed into a reindeer. Snowmen have bottles for

bodies and pipe cleaners for arms.

One of the most creative is a creature composed of a plastic room

deodorizer on the bottom and the dispenser nozzle of a whipped cream

bottle on the top. In between are two round heads.

“Whatever I feel like putting on it,” Young said.

Most of the ornaments on her tree this year have been made

recently, she said.

“I had other stuff last year, but really got busy and made all

these things in the last year-and-a-half,” Young said.

Young is used to working with her hands. Her career was printing

and repairing circuits. In her bedroom is a magnificent table of

rejected circuits made of platinum and gold.

In addition to ornaments, she also makes quilts for her growing

brood of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has 11 of the

former and one of the latter.

Young also makes beautiful bowls to place on the mantel out of old

Christmas cards. She cuts out the pictures from about 18 cards,

punches holes around the borders and crochets around each piece with

silver and gold thread. Then she sews them together and sprays them

with clear lacquer for a professional look.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at [email protected].