Five years ago I shared with you the following blog post with images that were likely the most shared images from my blog of all time. In fact, the photos were pinned over 108,000 times! But, as it turns out, there is much more to this story, something quite exciting I could hardly wait to share and will do so below. But first, please read my original blog post from 2010:
“Snowflakes from Kyiv”
A 2010 Repost
A very talented reader from half-way around the world emailed to me black & white photographs of his beautiful hand-cut snowflakes. I’m so happy to have received these and to share them with you from Arthur Shramko of Kyiv, Ukraine, who writes, “When I was a child my grandmother used to make these snowflakes, so she taught me and since then I make them every year.” He makes them in winter and sticks them on windows. Incredible.
2015 UPDATE:
I had attempted to reconnect with Arthur last year to no avail, but was able finally correspond with him just before Christmas this year (though, as he reminds me, their Christmas is celebrated January 7). Arthur is a 27-year-old UI/UX designer, still living and working in Kyiv, Ukraine, and aside from the hobby of paper-cutting, is also fond of typography and calligraphy.
He wrote “I was totally carried away by the sad events in my country. As you may now, we have kind of an undeclared war with Russia, and the situation was very tense last year. So I did not have time for things like snowflakes at all. Now the situation looks more or less stabilized, but still very disturbing.”
As a young child, he was taught to cut paper snowflakes by his grandmother. “Each year when we decorated our home for holidays, she used to make a lot of snowflakes to put on windows and to hang on strings. Of course, they were much simpler than my current ones, because there was not so much time to spend on them. I put my snowflakes on windows, walls, furniture, wherever I want, actually. But mostly I give them away to my friends.”
Arthur also shared with me some very exciting news- his snowflake images that I posted on my blog and were shared for several years around the world via the web and social networks like Pintrest, ultimately floated into the path of the creative department at Tiffany & Co. With the information from my original post, they were able to find Arthur and commission him to create custom snowflake designs for their 2015 Christmas campaign. His designs were included in in-store snowflake displays, and printed material such as this gorgeous holiday catalog: 
Arthur Shramko’s beautifully intricate snowflakes could also be found on individual product pages on the Tiffany & Co. website during the campaign. But most spectacular are his snowflakes coming to life in Tiffany & Co.’s Christmas animation:
It is lovely moments like this that remind me as a blogger that some stories shared can be more important than I can imagine in ways I can never predict. I am so blessed to have experienced but a fraction of the bigger picture. Congratulations on your successes, Arthur, and thank you once again for sharing your beautiful creations and yourself with the world.
Want to see more of Arthur’s paper snowflakes? Follow his work on Instagram at @makethesnowflake!
