1) 1950s Kitsch
A 1950s Christmas
is all about colour and shine. My mother
still has some decorations from when she was a child in the early 1950s and
they’re beautiful glass baubles in bright colours – hot pink, cyan blue, gold
and ruby red. Blue fell out favour for a while, but luckily it's now back with a vengeance, no longer confined to being part of an ‘icy’ theme
where it’s teamed with white and silver.
Don’t be afraid to throw some blue in with the reds, golds and greens.
Paper chains made
from vivid coloured sugar paper (or even newspaper!) were also popular, and
today is an ideal pre-Christmas activity to keep children occupied. If you don’t have any, borrow some, and then
you’re also helping out a friend so that they can get their Christmas shopping
done with the children out of the way.
Photo credit: Lori on Flickr (some rights reserved)
Photo credit: Lori on Flickr (some rights reserved)
Although the
1950s was the first decade in which the television would have been more widely
available (from the middle of the decade onwards), it wouldn’t have really been
a big feature of Christmas day. More
likely, a fully stocked cocktail cabinet and a few classic board games would
have been the order of the day!
For 1950’s
style gift wrapping ideas, I refer you to a very amusing post by Jen of ‘Jen
but Never Jenn’, where she chronicles her attempts at a 1950’s Christmas.
Mollie and Fred had these 1950's style paper doilies (pack of 36, £3.99), I'm not sure they still stock them but you can probably find similar else where.
Original vintage baubles can be found on Etsy, but bright coloured baubles are all over the high street too, what about this great vintage style one from M&S? (£4)
2) Victorian
A Victorian
Christmas is an elegant, ordered, elaborate affair. In a
Victorian theme your main material will be printed paper, as this was an age
when printing techniques took a giant leap forward, making colour printed
materials accessible to the masses. There
are plenty of Victorian Christmas images on the internet, or even in your word
processing programme’s clipart section.
All can be printed on to card or paper, and then used to make paper
garlands, crackers, greeting cards, or strung with ribbon to make tree
ornaments. The BBC has a great site
‘Make Your Own Victorian Christmas’ with tutorials. Just don't be surprised if Father Christmas is in green, not red!
Victorian
Christmas trees would have been adorned with candles, but today for health and
safety I would advise using electric imitations. There’s a lot of choice nowadays, and lights
are quite inexpensive. If you stick to
clear bulbs it will look a bit more authentic than the coloured ones. As well as handmade ornaments, Victorian
trees would have been adorned with sweets, fruit and small gifts. To add a bit of bling to your tree without
using the Victorian feel, what about using old jewellery threaded on ribbon? The more ostentatious the better!
A good source
for Victorian inspired decorations is Past Times. The physical stores closed down in the UK
recently, but there is still an online store stocking items such as this decoupage bauble for £4.
3) Natural
A natural
Christmas is simple, homemade and brings Winter foliage indoors. This has to
be one of the cheapest options but will involve you rummaging in hedgerows in
the cold, armed with a pair of secateurs!
My sister fell in the hedge at the bottom of my parents’ garden last
year whilst trying to retrieve some holly for me. In an ‘au-naturel’ theme use sprays of holly,
pine cones, sprigs of mistletoe and poinsettia plants, adding ribbon scraps
from your sewing box here and there.
Dried slices of orange or lemon from the kitchen arranged with cinnamon
sticks tied with string can be added to wreaths or mantelpiece boughs. And of course, a real tree will be the
centrepiece. You can now buy varieties
that don’t shed needles if you’re worried about the vacuuming! Gingerbread shapes hung with string or ribbon
on a tree is a good choice for a natural theme.
A snow effect
can be achieved with a dusting of icing sugar or flour through a sieve –fake
snow sometimes has chemicals in, so this is a good option for households with
pets (just don’t get it wet!). Also
please remember that caution should be used with bringing berries into the
house as the majority are poisonous, and would be highly toxic to both pets and
small children! Alternatively, ‘berries’
can be mimicked with buttons, or mini pom poms that are widely available in
craft stores.
Photo credit: Ron Cogswell on Flickr (some rights reserved)
As for
gift-wrapping, presents in my parents’ childhood were simply wrapped in brown
paper/newspaper and string, or would be hidden in a woollen stocking. I remember receiving a bicycle once in my own
childhood that wasn’t wrapped (too big!) but I had to follow a piece of string
around the house to find it. Remember
that it’s the anticipation with children, and a similar treasure-hunt type
activity to find a present will give more thrills than the pricey wrapping paper
(which gets ripped off in seconds). Or
what about a lucky dip? Find a huge
cardboard box and fill with shredded newspaper, hiding toys in the layers. Games to draw out the present-opening process
will make it much more fun – I remember being with some of my nieces one
Christmas and they tore through a pile of presents at such speed that the whole
thing was over in under 5 minutes! A bit
of an anticlimax.
All of these
themes can be done on the cheap, or you can really blow the budget with them! If time to make your own decorations is something you’re short of, how about hosting a Christmas
drinks and crafts evening for some of your friends to help you make some?
What's your vintage Christmas style? I know some of you must have your decorations up already, let's see some photos!
What a delightful holiday post. Our Christmas decor (of which we really don't have scads by any stretch of the imagination) is a hodgepodge of pieces collected over the years (with some stretching back to my childhood) and doesn't really have a theme (aside from a general Christmas season one, I mean). It struck me this year as I was decorating how much I'd like, over time, to work toward creating more of a cohesive look (ideally with plenty of vintage thrown in). I love our little collection of Christmas decor all the same though, no matter how much of a motley crew it may be, and even if I had a super distinct theme going on, I'd still find room in the house for these beloved pieces that have been with us for so long.
ReplyDelete♥ Jessica