KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s Christmas in July at Hallmark stores across the country. It’s also Christmas in July for the thousands of people who wait for this time to arrive each year.

The company revealed half of its new holiday ornaments in stores this week.

Each year, Hallmark artists create 500 new original keepsake ornaments. It’s something they’ve done annually since 1973.

The first year Hallmark released 18 Christmas ornaments made of glass and yarn.

Today, many of the ornaments are animatronic and can even talk with each other to tell a story.

Each artist creates more than a dozen ornaments every year. Each begins as a drawing and are then molded into a sculpture. That mold is then painted and mass produced before they go out to stores nationwide.

One Hallmark artist who’s been making ornaments for two decades loves that people put her ornaments on their Christmas trees year after year.

“It’s like watching your drawing come to life and jump off the page and become 3-D and so for an artist, it’s an amazing feeling and then to see it on the walls, the unveiling of ornaments,” Joanne Wright, Hallmark Ornament Artist, said.

Hallmark released 250 of the new ornaments for this year this week. The other half will be released in October.