NURSE’S PART TIME JOB

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28758, 2 December 1958, Page 2

NURSE’S PART TIME JOB

Signwriting For Christmas The fascination of watching a festive ham-bone take shape under a paint-brush and of seeing plums appear in a Christmas pudding made shoppers pause yesterday outside a cake shop in the heart of Christchurch. The signwriter was a student nurse, Miss Beverley Duncan, who said that she likes to paint shop windows for “Christmas specials" as part-time work and earn extra money for Christmas expenses. She was once an art student, she said, and later painted glass slides for screen advertising. Then she took Up designing signs for sand-blasting on glass. Her main clients for Christmas window paintings were food shops. Plenty of advice and comment was given by persons passing by, she said. One man called out “pile on plenty of snow”—he considered that the main attraction in window decoration at Christmas, holly, bells, reindeer, ribbons and pine-trees were all stock designs for Christmas signs. “If I don’t paint high up the pictures are liable to be scraped off by children,” she said as she climbed on a box to reach the window’s corners. Souvenir painting, poker work and ticket writing are other parttime lobs which Miss Duncan combines with nursing. This Is her third season painting Christchurch windows. One assignment led to another. When persons saw her at work in the street they stopped and asked her to call round and paint their decorative window advertisements she said. “Some day I’d like to try something new from the traditional candles, lanterns and snow-topped cottages and work up an abstract modern Christmas design,” said Miss Duncan.