Next time you are about to chuck away pistachio shells, bottle caps or drink cans think twice. These humble items can be the perfect materials for creating clever art. Septuagenarian Consiglia Debono tells Kristina Chetcuti how she uses her imagination to transform junk into Christmas decorations.
It’s not boughs of holly which deck Mrs Debono’s halls but empty shampoo bottles transformed into Christmas cribs. Her unusual decorations are made up of recycled waste such as dried skin grapes, unused light bulbs and empty spray cans.
It may not be a white Christmas but it sure is a green one for Mrs Debono, 77, of Rabat: “I don’t buy ready-made decorations. For me it’s a joy to create something out of things which would otherwise get thrown away.”
She loves Christmas with a passion and by the first week of November starts decorating the house. It takes her three weeks to assemble everything and no nook and no cranny is spared the Christmas touch.
Everything is themed, from the napkins to the hand towels and over 50 light sets flicker all over the house and as some of them are of the musical kind, it’s an ongoing medley of Christmas hums.
Mrs Debono has 10 cribs, all made from different materials. One is made from an empty floor-detergent bottle, painstakingly covered with nut shells and buttons. Another sees the tiny nativity figurines fitted inside a hollowed pumpkin. One has the grotto made out of dried grape skins and seeds and yet another has flowers made of unused light bulbs and plastic bags.
The crib on display as soon as you enter the house is carved in a bough and decorated with dried orange peel and pistachio nuts. Here and there she has touches of Maltese lace, which she works herself using the traditional ċombini pegs.
Other items Mrs Debono recycles include milk cartons, egg cartons, cereal packets, drink cans and other food storage containers, newspaper, plastic bags, cards, old toys, boxes, baskets, paint pails and heaps more.
In fact “waste” is not really a word in her vocabulary, she says: “I don’t keep waste-collectors busy. Only rarely do I take out a garbage bag because I recycle most of the stuff.”
In her meticulously organised workshop upstairs, Mrs Debono paints, decorates and revamps base items into something unique.
“Before I am about to throw something away I take a moment to stop and look at its potential. All you need is creativity and imagination. Sometimes, I even wake up in the middle of the night with an idea of what decorations I can create,” she says.
Her ability to turn basic household items into homemade art has not gone unnoticed in her community and she teaches craft-making at the Elderly Day Care Centre. This, despite the fact, she says tongue-in-cheek, she is no spring chicken herself.
“But it’s great to pass on my passion for creating things. It is an opportunity to show your individuality through your creations. All you need is a little time, effort and glue. As they say: busy hands, quiet mind.”
Her crafts have been the medicine which helped her with her grieving when her husband, Ġużeppi, passed away three years ago. “He loved Christmas as much as I do and every year we would decorate the house from top to bottom together. Now I do it on my own but I can feel he’s with me as I hang up the decorations,” she said.
Despite the sadness, she still considers Christmas to be a time of happiness. As a mother of seven, grandmother to 14 and great-grandmother to one, her house is constantly bustling and, needless to say, her grandchildren find her decorations fascinating.
And, being young at heart, she loves throwing a good party: “Every year I hold a Christmas party for all my neighbours and then another one for my travel companions,” says Mrs Debono.
Her prized decoration is a life-size Santa Claus, which sings, winks and wriggles at the touch of a button.
Is this her work as well?
“Oh, no! My son got me that, all the way from Australia.”
Her love of Christmas clearly transcends the continents.