Christmas inspiration ... traditional, vintage and whimsical

Friday 30 November 2012


In my last Creative Evening Workshop at our Toronto store, I talked about how easy it is to make your home look like a page out of a magazine by simply co-ordinating your home decor and gift wrapping projects. That does not mean that you have to go out and buy all new decorations or wrap every gift the same way. What I try to do is select a theme that works for my family/home and try to keep my colours limited to just a few. You will find it much easier to shop for supplies and decorations and everyone will think that you had a designer help you decorate for the holidays.

To show you what I am suggesting, I created three different inspiration boards using pins from my Pinterest boards and then I created three project boards using my diy projects and our products! 


First, here's my Pinterest Inspiration Board - I called it Traditional:
Here you will see some new decorating trends like chalkboard art combined with burlap and natural elements and textures. The colours are earthy with traditional reds and greens, snowflake white and woodland browns. 

Now here's my decorating and wrapping  ideas using the Traditional theme and colour combinations ...
Our Gingerbread collection works well for a traditional Christmas theme. I added burlap ribbons and bags, kraft and black wrapping paper and boxes, red and white striped ribbons and bitty bags, twine and red and green accents. Natural elements like felt ornaments, pine cones and evergreen branches make you feel like you are at the cottage. Gingerbread men and yummy cookie gift jars take you back to when you were a child. I added small details like a rhinestone buckle for a "Santa inspired" gift wrap and clear  glittered ornaments to remind you that it is okay to add a some sparkle to this theme.

 My next Pinterest Inspiration Board is Vintage:

This is where everything old is new again. Your colours will be more muted and it's okay if things are distressed or tarnished. But not everything has to be aged because it's okay to mix old with new. Just make sure that you use a few colours when you mix and match. And it's all about texture so mix it up - rough and soft, shiny and worn - it all goes together.

I fell in love with our vintage inspired Carneeval collection as soon as I saw it and I had a great time designing projects that would work together as part of my vintage theme ...
You can see that my reds go from burgundy to bright red to burnt orange with this collection. Felt, burlap and woodsy elements that were used in the Traditional theme also worked with this theme and I mixed them with gold and silver glass glitter and the gold Moonlight in Paris bags and boxes. Vintage holiday graphics and old font styles are perfect with this theme. Distress inks make paper tags and cotton bags look old and worn.

And my last Pinterest Inspiration Board is what I called Whimsical:
This theme can be very sweet and child like or very sophisticated and elegant depending on how you approach it. The jewel toned colours are not what one would normally call traditional Christmas but they certainly do make you smile when you look at these pictures. Think Dr. Seuss and Cindy Loo Who, colourful candies and paper cut out snowflakes. 
I combined our Celebration Trees and silver Moonlight in Paris packaging products for this theme. I used polka dots, stripes, glitter and anything that made me smile in these projects. The purest whites make every jewel toned colour pop. I showed you chalkboard art on the traditional inspiration board and I can see them here too. Snowflake paper punches make white paper bags and tags look more festive. Glitter accents and ornaments are a must for this theme. 

I hope that I have inspired you to look at your Holiday decorating and packaging projects in a different way this year. As I finish writing this post and look out my window, I can see snow falling. Tomorrow is the first day of December and I know that tonight my youngest daughter will be pulling out the advent calendar that I made for her first Christmas 13 years ago. The countdown begins!

By the way, we have just opened a new Creative Bag Pinterest account and have been starting to add lots of great packaging and party boards.You can check it out here!


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