When it comes to the topic of the holiday season and Christmas decor, we can easily split the general public into two different factions. The first, which, for one reason or another, also constitutes the majority, usually adapts a full-blown consumerist viewpoint where only the biggest and the most glaring yard in the neighborhood counts. When your property is easily burning the amount of electricity that is generated by a medium-sized power plant, you’ve got the game going for you.

On the other side of the field, we have team “green”, the ones who relentlessly employ their DIY ingenuity to fill in all the empty squares in visually striking Instagram grids. As you might have already guessed by the title, in this particular case, we’ll align with the minority.

How Come?

First and foremost, it’s a means of decorating that sees no harm done on nature’s part. Simple as that- a set of neatly presented pine cones is a Christmas decor that’s built relying solely on renewable resources. Also, decorating with raw materials simply makes the whole process a lot more exciting for the creative mind behind it. And finally, as evident by the likes of Kinfolk or any other contemporary interior design and lifestyle magazine, the results are usually vastly more tasteful than the regular, National Lampoon type of a total string light fest. Following are a couple of unorthodox solutions for your holiday season interior which are effortless and eye-catching without exception.

DIY Snow Globe

Show this one to anybody who does not believe in little things with enormous power. Snow globes are the archetypal Christmas decors and are simple pieces one can shake up to remind him/herself that every cloud has its silver lining. Also, they’re super easy to make by yourself. For this particular purpose, you can either utilize a small sized mason jar or simply buy a shatter-proof snow globe at your local crafts store. Roll a miniature snowman using white polymer clay, add some buttons, eyes, and a carrot nose using glue, and bake the figure in your oven for about 20 minutes. Cover the baked, hardened figure with nail polish and leave it be for the next 48 hours. Once it’s battle ready, use the same silicon sealant to attach it to the lid of the jar. Fill the jar with distilled water, add a couple of glycerin drops (just enough to make the glitter less prone to the gravity forces), and sprinkle some glitter or any other lightweight snow alternative into the jar. Finally, cover the lip with a waterproof silicone sealant and twist on the lid. That’s it- you’ve got your homemade snow globe!

Pine Boughs

Now, here you actually don’t have too much to do aside from making sure that the pine boughs you pick are lush and tonally rich. What you do next is simple. You pick a jar once again! Or, in the best case scenario, a galvanized bucket for some additional flair of rustic charm. Fill the respective tray with water and simply add your pine boughs to the composition. That’s it– now you have an appealing, fine-scented decor with emphasis on the organic aesthetic. For those inclined towards a more sophisticated and alienated look, the boughs can also be painted silver with a spray paint. Add some red winter holly berries, and you’ve got the stock photo website look! Speaking of the aesthetic, make sure to soak up some inspiration from sites like Unsplash.com! We’re yet to find another web media that champions this non-traditional, HIP aesthetic to the extent this popular stock photo website does! 

Symbolic Austerity

As if it wasn’t enough with buckets and boughs, we’ll go even further. The holiday season is, in numerous respects, an unexplored territory when it comes to legitimately artistic decorations. The fundamental leitmotif here? Always do more with less. In this case, it’s just a mandarin with a pair of rather conveniently shaped boughs painted white. Don’t have a dark surface to stick these elements to? No worries! Just patch together a couple of small planks and paint your new palette in black. That’s it, and you have your own Expressionist Noel decor. Just kidding, we all know that highly stylized variations about the topic of deer have since become a staple of Pinterest aesthetic.

Christmas Tree without the Tree Itself

While this one has the potential to summon a strong reaction from the Yuletide purists, having a genuine Christmas tree is by no means a custom one should stick to at any cost. Having a creative Christmas tree alternative might, in fact, freshen up the usual festive dynamic and add a new shade to your interior! So what do we do here? Find a bunch of nice looking twigs, peel them, put on some lacquer, and nail the freshly polished set to a section of a wall (for those up for a more complex handicraft, you can also bind the branches and hang the whole framework by a ceiling beam). Embellish the setup with Christmas-themed elements and voila, you have another organic decor that’s in line with the trendy, Tumblr-like look. 

Using Plain Logs

Okay, we have reached the point where it actually cannot become more straightforward. That, however, does not deem the following holiday season decor lazy or too simple for its own good. Quite the contrary, using a simple (planed at best) log might be your ultimate victory over the zany, over-the-top net of colorful bulbs. The extent of options is also quite surprising- put them in a galvanized bucket and place it next to the Christmas tree, create a stylized advent wreath, or simply use pieces of logs as pads for candles in your Christmas composition on the mantel for a total zero-waste Christmas. 

The “Artsy” Canvas Thing

With the upcoming Christmas season, you’ll definitely notice an ever-increasing quantity of Facebook ads promoting a variety of simple yet undeniably appealing canvas prints. Beautiful fonts, clever wordplay, or quotes from your favourite Christmas classics, these pieces of wall art are in demand whenever the season approaches. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as they’re mostly tasteful and sit well within most interiors. With that said, we’ll happily jump on the bandwagon and offer our very own Christmas-themed prints. First off, they’re still completely in line with the environmentally friendly, DIY premise presented in the introductory paragraph. The image you choose to print can be your sole creation, whilst the manufacturing process is carried out according to our eco-friendly policies. Also, you can and you probably will acquire plenty of them as the incredible pricing makes our canvas prints the most wallet-friendly option in the whole department.

Abstraction, indirectness, rustic hues, and visual abstinence are ruling supreme as is evident just by typing the phrase “Christmas” in the Pinterest search query. A DIY quest and a way to avoid needless expenses all at once, an approach like this is pretty much faultless. Be it a bouquet of pine cones, spray-painted logs with red candles placed upon them, or a beautiful, large format canvas print with a Christmas greeting of your choice, the camp “DIY” is a camp of fun, resourcefulness, and recycling for good. It’s pretty obvious which one you should align with here!

Der Beitrag This Year, Don’t Follow the Pattern – Have a Bold Christmas Decor! erschien zuerst auf My-Picture.co.uk blog.