Creative gift to impress boss
Some people love their bosses, others are not so fond of theirs. But what if your boss is truly amazing, and you want to give him or her something truly special for an upcoming birthday to show your love and appreciation?
A friend called me the other day asking if I could do a family tree for her boss’ 50th birthday. She said that she spoke to all of her coworkers about the custom family tree paintings that I do, and all of them agreed that a gift like that would be much more personal and special than anything they could buy in a store.
The best part is that it while a family tree painting is a truly unique gift it was also beyond affordable for my friend and her coworkers to get for their boss’ big birthday since they’ve pulled their money together. Of course, I was more than happy to do this for my friend and her colleagues, but to start working on a painting I had to have some information about my friend’s female boss, as well as photos I could paint her family from.
That’s when the fun part started. In a James Bond fashion my friend inconspicuously took pictures of the family photos her boss had displayed on her desk. It took several tries to get the good ones! Then she questioned her coworkers regarding all the information they remembered about their boss’ family, such as what hers, her husband’s and her kids hobbies and personalities are.
One particular detail about their family that she told me made me figure out the direction I wanted to go to with the painting. The family was originally from the Philippines and I’ve decided to incorporate their Filipino heritage into the painting. I placed a banner with the family’s last name at the bottom of the painting and made each side of the banner end in a flag: American on one side to represent their adopted country and the Philippine flag to represent their homeland.
I figured it would be neat to use a tree native to the Philippines as the actual family tree I was going to place the family on. Not knowing anything about the native flora I did my research and found an absolutely stunning tree with beautiful white blooms called the Katmon tree. I usually write the family members’ names on the tree leaves, but this time I’ve decided to write their names on the flower petals. It worked out great since the Katmon tree blooms have five petals which matched the number of people in the family.
I finished the family tree just in time for my friend’s boss’ birthday! Since all the employees were invited to her birthday party (my friend included) I asked her to take a few picture of her boss’ reaction to the painting.
I was really ecstatic when my friend send me a snap shot of her boss’ happy face when she opened her gift, but little did I know that a few minutes later I was going to get a message from my friend telling me that her boss was already familiar with my work and actually thought about getting a family tree painting from me. It couldn’t have worked out better!
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