DARTMOUTH, N.S. – Every Christmas Eve, Dave Stredulinsky can be found relaxing in his home – scissors in hand – snipping white pieces of paper into festive snowflakes to hang on his Christmas tree and throughout the house.
Although the craft is something the 60-year-old says he deeply enjoys, it’s become more than just a pastime.
Stredulinsky is selling his snowflake patterns to people in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, China and beyond.
And it all started with a Christmas tradition, he said.
“When I was a child, my mother had us cutting snowflakes to decorate the Christmas tree,” said Stredulinsky from his home on Saturday.
“Once I was married, had children and had my own Christmas tree, I started doing it again.”
In order to preserve some of his creations, Stredulinsky began scanning the patterns onto his computer.
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Then, he posted a few flakes to his personal website.
Flash forward about 15 years and millions of people have visited the site to purchase the patterns from every corner of the globe.
People can buy memberships to the site to have full access to every pattern, or can buy CDs with up to 500 snowflakes stored onto it.
The site currently boasts hundreds of flakes that anyone with a pair of scissors and a printer can make themselves in about five or 10 minutes.
Every holiday season, the 60-year-old snips and clips about 25 to 30 new patterns and posts them in a folder on the website.
And it isn’t just children and parents picking up the scissors. Stredulinsky said school teachers, home decorators and crafters have all purchased his creations.
He’s even tailored a heart-shaped snowflake pattern for a wedding in California.
Stredulinsky said he doesn’t have a website counter, but recalls reaching more than one million hits in 2004, and estimates a few million more have stopped by since then.
“It’s still more or less a hobby for me and I haven’t promoted anything as far as advertising… but probably a few hundred people actually purchase patterns and CDs every year,” he said.
“I get a lot of complimentary emails saying how excited people are about using them.”
It may seem like a far stretch from his day job – an engineer with the Department of National Defence – but Stredulinsky said the two are more similar than one would think.
“I like the beauty of the designs, the symmetry. It, in some ways, relates to engineering studies where you’re interested in geometry and how things are built.”
Stredulinsky’s daughters have outgrown their safety scissors, but he doesn’t mind. He said he’ll continue to create snowflakes every year despite not having young children, and will eventually introduce his hobby to his future grandchildren.
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