This precious Royal Doulton is a special edition bauble created for the Queen's Golden Anniversary, and it is very close to her heart. My wife begged me to trim my beard a little after this bauble record and I obliged and gave it a little trim—nothing major!” Sylvia’s love for Christmas stemmed from her childhood. “Christmas was always a family affair,” she told us. Sylvia, also known as Nana Baubles, lives in Swansea, Wales and owns a staggering 1,760 of the hanging decorations.

Among her many treasures, Nana Baubles also owns crab and lobster-shaped ornaments, food-shaped ones (like hamburgers and popcorn) and even telephone boxes and Disney characters. The process of attaching all 710 baubles to his beard took two and a half hours and over an hour to remove them. I think it’s a children’s time. I think Christmas is a wonderful time to excite the children, so I do believe you should do the best you can for them." The oldest baubles she owns are pink and blue ones from the 2000s, which is when she first started collecting them. The most valuable item in Nana Baubles' collection was gifted to her by her granddaughter, a beautiful Royal Tea bauble.

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They are more like a Christmas decoration than a bauble, aren’t they?" Nana Baubles says, talking about her majestic collection and its many different pieces. Joel also says that while his friends and family are proud of his latest record title achievement, they think it’s a little bizarre.

Other than your classic Christmas decorations, Nana Baubles' collection counts many unique and quirky items. Every December, the extraordinary collection was beautifully displayed throughout Sylvia’s house, with baubles hanging from every inch of the ceiling.

I have a large shoebox full of baubles and I think they’ll stay there until I decide to attempt the record again,” he said. And even though Sylvia’s birthday fell on Boxing Day, meaning she received just one present for Christmas and her birthday combined, Sylvia was always happy. Still, Joel says baubles (and clothespins) are some of his least favourite objects to place in his beard. Also known as “beardaments,” the festive, clip-on facial hair accessories are colourful jingling balls for brightening up bristly faces.

Each bauble is different; they come from all over the world in a variety of shapes, materials, colours and themes. They think I’m nuts, and I guess I sort of am. You have to be a little crazy to break a bunch of records with your beard,” he said. It's so large in fact, that she has broken the record for the world's largest collection of Christmas bauble ornaments.

I think it’s a children’s time. I think Christmas is a wonderful time to excite the children, so I do believe you should do the best you can for them." – Nana Baubles Joel also admits that it’s helpful to first get into a festive spirit by playing some appropriate Christmas music. Find a category that interests you, decide you can do it, and practice until you do! It takes a lot of work for something as silly as this, but the glory is worth it.” Ever since then I’ve re-broken my own record every Christmas as I’ve improved my beard bauble technique.” Nana Baubles took years to put together such a collection, with different pieces from everywhere in the world.

After that, she started buying baubles in boxes. Soon after, people started gifting her different items.

I thought, 'oh my god, this is wonderful'. They were from all over the world. And then I thought, 'I’m going to try this.'" Decorating his beard isn’t as easy as it looks. In fact, Joel says it’s a tedious procedure that takes quite a bit of patience. I have to remove them all individually because each one has a tiny alligator clip. If I tried to shake them out it would probably rip my beard and face off.” I found that if I take my time and really focus on the individual strands of beard hair and small groups of hair, I can manage to fit so many more in there.” The most valuable bauble in Sylvia’s collection is a special edition one made for the Queen’s Golden Anniversary.