White Christmas

Every year, Tom Baker from Sandhurst in Berkshire, transforms windows around the country using a can of snow spray and a dry brush...

“One Christmas, about 12 years ago, my husband, Tom, bought a can of snow spray and painted a little house on one of our windows. He has never had any formal artistic training, but he was good. All of our friends loved his design, and everyone started asking if he would do their windows too. It became a bit of a tradition every Christmas,” says Keri Baker.

The Bakers – Tom, Keri, and their children, Rae, nine, and Isaac, seven – then went to live in Australia, so Tom could pursue his music career but returned home to Berkshire after five years.

“The Christmas we came back, Tom started painting friends’ and families’ windows again, and it kind of snowballed,” says Keri. “I posted a picture of one of his windows on the Wokingham Gossip Girls group on Facebook – and it got 800 comments. Then it was picked up by CNN and the Daily Mail. We couldn’t believe how far news of our windows had spread. We were blown away.”

Keri has a marketing background, and the couple decided they should start a business out of their snow windows, and they haven’t looked back since.

Each window is unique. Tom started out creating traditional winter scenes, with a Dickensian theme, or of St Paul’s Cathedral, but now he can create whatever his customers would like.