Christmas Tinsel
Are you going to a Christmas party? Do you need a new fashion accessory to complete your outfit? This sparkly tinsel accessory takes a haircut to make and can be worn as a hat or wig. It can be made with as many or as few colors as you want to match any Christmas outfit. If you don’t like the full version, make a smaller version and wear it as a hair accessory – Put your hair in a ‘bun’ style and then cover it with your tinsel hair accessory, very cute for younger disco divas.
To make a tinsel hat/wig you only need…
Some tinsel in whatever color you choose, 4M is more than enough. A stocking or a tight leg and needle and thread.
Start by cutting the toe off the stocking and ignoring it. Pull the leg portion of the stocking over your head so that it sits comfortably in place. The finished hat/wig will eventually shrink slightly, pull the stocking down an extra few inches, perhaps so that it covers your eyebrows.
With the stocking still on your head (You don’t look crazy Ho Ho Ho!) Tie a knot in the excess stocking hanging on top of your head. Make the knot small, neat and tight and very close to your head, in the middle of your hair. This is the base of your hat/wig.
Pull the stocking over a football. This keeps the stocking learned, as it would sit on your head.
Starting at the knot, sew and attach a piece of tinsel to the stocking. Working in circles around the knot, stick the tinsel to the stocking. The stitches can be about 3 to 4 cm apart. If the hat/wig is to be one colour, continue in circles until the stocking is covered.
For two colors, add the second piece of tinsel next to the first and take turns with the colors to make circles. The tinsel will spin down the stocking. Continue until the stocking is covered in tinsel.
Did you know that in the past wigs were not only worn as a fashion accessory, but also covered up skin diseases and head lice – Yew!
4 Christmas decoration ideas for the modern office
Traditional decoration of office spaces for Christmas is considered by several employers (especially in government offices) as out of place in a modern and ‘diverse’ workplace. Despite the union and even some high-profile protests against these ‘Scrooge-penders’, there may be offices that would rather make their decorations look more professional than tinsel and baubles. A balance between professionalism and cheerfulness is what they are looking for. Christmas is important in the lives of customers (and staff), and those who do business with them (or employers) will benefit from sharing in this festive mood.
It is possible to share the Christmas spirit with your customers without having to deal with tinsel. The idea is to take traditional Christmas colors and turn them into accents for the workplace and office supplies. Or offices can use lighting in a unique way to convey revelry. Traditional decor elements can also suit the modern workplace, simply with a modern twist.
Here are 4 ideas that can keep the modern office professional with a muted and refreshing Christmas message that’s much easier to tidy up than traditional ornaments.
Use traditional color accents – red and white
If you’re finishing up your office space with Christmas around the corner, or reprinting your stationery, consider making changes to the colors of your walls or your stationery headers.
Red, white and green are the colors to go for – they automatically warm the room and can set a festive mood in December and be a fun space to work in the rest of the year.
If you don’t want such a big change, you can also have your letterhead printer for the month with modern Christmas motifs, such as a silhouette of bells or a fir tree. Try to choose a motif that matches your brand image as much as possible.
Use modern sculptures to match your decor
Modern artists and sculptures have adapted traditional Christmas scenes such as the birth of Christ, or Santa Claus and his reindeer, with modern styles and modern materials such as metal in iron and bronze. Look for abstract pieces with minimal details and they will probably fit perfectly into your modern office space.
Look for modern twists on traditional decor
A modern contrasting Christmas tree motif framed on the wall or even a corner of the office with a wall printed with modern stylized Christmas motifs such as snowflakes, reindeer silhouettes or mistletoe silhouettes can refer to a professional yet fun staff. You can also put in a Spin Collective Christmas tree wall sticker, which comes in 16 colors.
There are plenty of modern Christmas tree styles available – like the plywood tree created by Australian designer Buro North, or a non-traditional cherry blossom Christmas tree from Asda. Tando Chipboard also has a contemporary Christmas tree that can serve as an ornament; the Design Museum Shop and designer Giles Miller has a beautiful eco-friendly cardboard tree with elements that you can rearrange on a wooden stand to create your own tree shape.
Use lights and chandeliers for effect
There are plenty of things you can do with lamps (and chandeliers) to match your modern decor. The brainchild of American designer Lawrence Bud Stoker at Modern Christmas Trees.com is an easy to store and set up spiral tree with chandelier elements that fits into almost any kind of minimalist space.
Using neon or more energy-saving LED lighting for a modern Christmas wall motif can also work. Large office buildings can use neon displays on the outside and keep the interior clean. A large neon tree display can work well with this idea.
The possibilities are endless for decorating office spaces this Christmas. Offices that want to keep their spaces modern no longer have to worry about messy paper cutouts and tacky decorations or messy tinsel ending up in the trash every January. Modern decor elements can be more energy efficient and deliver a bright, yet friendly message to those entering the workplace.
Tinsel and attributes and the meaning of life
It’s Dec. Sweet month of mistletoe, holly and ivy: there are carols in the air, bells on the street corners, reindeer on the roof. Madison Avenue has kicked into high gear. Hollywood is making movies that blow the message on silver trumpets: “Christmas is about family, Santa Claus and Dr. Seuss.” Every minister in the land preaches a sermon from the first three chapters of the book of Luke. Ten thousand families hang ten thousand decorations in ten thousand houses with ten thousand traditions.
All of this begs the question: What exactly is Christmas all about?
What comes to mind when you think of Christmas? childhood memories. Sugar cookies. Sleigh rides and snowflakes and stockings by the fire. Presents. Family. traditions. “Silent Night.” All wonderful things, all important things (some more important than others) – but none of the above answers the question. What is Christmas about?
Last night in church we sang “Angels We Have Heard On High” and I thought of the shepherds on that very first Christmas, so many years ago: I thought how they saw and heard such a miracle, and yet, they knew not to fall into the trap we have fallen into. They didn’t go home to decorate angel trees; they didn’t make angel cookies and they didn’t sing angel songs. They knew that Christmas was not about angels. The angels knew it too – they came for one reason, to point people’s hearts to a child in a manger.
Christmas is about Christ. It is about that Eternal Child who still brings light to the darkest nights (“…beyond the Jordan, in the Galilee of the nations… The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: those who in the land from the shadow of death, upon them hath light shone.” Isa. 9:1-2.)
I love the tinsel and the attributes of Christmas. I really do. But as soon as they cause me to lose sight of the Lord I love, they have done me a great disservice.
So far I’m sure you all agree with me. But I don’t want to stop yet; this truth, that Christmas is not about attributes but about Christ, goes beyond the holidays in the whole way we live our lives. You see, just as Christmas has so often swallowed Christ, so religion has often swallowed Him. Too often our religion has become a song in which the music drowns out the words – a life made up entirely of body and without heart.
What is your faith about? Try to talk to people about the Lord and you will find yourself talking about prophecies and healings, programs and events, preachers and singers and services and denominations and missionaries and the neighbor Christians who just don’t understand Christianity. The fact is, God didn’t love the world so much that he sent the First Baptist Church of Whereversville. He “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Nor is the message, “Come to the great Christian concert with sixteen Grammy-award winning singers and you will find peace.” Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Religion, with its traditions and customs, is not wrong in itself. We need it to help us map out the truth, to help us understand what is too high for us. We kneel because it reminds us to pray; we sing because the song reminds us of freedom and beauty, and the Lord of both; we light candles to remind us of the light of the Spirit within us. There is nothing wrong with this until we stop using religion to lead us to Christ and start using it to lead us to self.
When the children of Israel sinned against God in the wilderness and were poisoned by serpents, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and fasten it to a stake, and those who looked at it would be healed. This strange image was a symbol of the coming Messiah (“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” John 3: 14-15). The Israelites kept the serpent for many years until the time of King Hezekiah. In those days people had turned away from God and began to worship the serpent itself – a reminder of God’s grace turned into an idol. Hezekiah, in his zeal for the Lord, had the bronze serpent destroyed.
This pattern has been repeated throughout history. People look to religion instead of God. Those of us who come from a Protestant tradition think back to the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages and shake our heads, but our religious trappings have just as much potential to lead us astray – if we put our trust in them and not in Jesus. History proves this to be true. Those whose faith is in Christ live in love; those whose faith is in religion must live in judgment of others, for how else can they justify themselves?
How do you decorate a Christmas tree?
This article is a crash course on decorating a Christmas tree. Your first step is to choose a natural or artificial tree. Keep in mind that a natural evergreen tree comes in only one color – green. However, artificial trees are now sold in practically all colors of the rainbow. Remember that whatever color you choose will become your canvas for adding more color in the form of garlands, tinsel and decorations.
Your second step is to decide which color schemes work best with which color of the tree. Green Christmas trees, both natural and artificial, look best with primary colors such as green, blue and red. White Christmas trees look best with a red theme, pink theme, gold theme or silver theme or a combination of the above. Blue Christmas trees look best with gold or silver trim. Red Christmas trees look great with green or pink trims.
The third step in this Christmas tree decorating course is about lighting. If you are going to buy a natural tree, you need to buy a strand of bulbs or diodes. Traditional strands of Christmas bulbs come in a variety of decorative shapes and sizes, including the vintage egg shape, small twinkling lights, and string lights. However, if you buy an artificial tree, you may be able to get one that is pre-lit. The prettiest pre-lit Christmas trees have fiberglass needles that give the tree its own glow. Especially beautiful are the white Christmas trees with fiberglass on their ends. These trees remind many people of angel feathers.
The fourth step is to research the types of decorations available to you. The most basic is the pendulum. A garland is simply any kind of object that can be used to encircle the tree. You can make your own garland from cooked popcorn, holly berries, or candy. You can also use a long ribbon and attach bows to it. Of course, there are all kinds of garlands commercially available. Most popular are the garlands made of furry clusters of white or gold tinsel. Red and green tinsel garlands can look especially beautiful on white Christmas trees.
If you are traditionally minded, consider decorating your tree with glass baubles. These are either hand blown or made in a factory. Many of them are painted and decorated with glitter. You can buy these as globes, flutes, tubes and also in the form of musical instruments, angels and other Christmas themed items. However, if you have small children, you may want to opt for the plastic versions of these decorative balls as they won’t shatter when dropped from the tree.
An important tip to remember when decorating trees with glass balls is to place the larger ornaments at the bottom of the tree and the smaller ones at the top. This keeps the overall effect of the tree in a pleasing proportion to the decorations.
Christmas decorations don’t have to be expensive. You can make your own paper cut into the shape of snowflakes and other Christmas themes. Candies (especially the candy cane), apples, oranges, and cookies (especially gingerbread cookies) can also be used as Christmas decorations. Red Christmas trees look especially good decorated with white shortbread cookies decorated with glitter. White Christmas trees look great decorated with homemade presents made from small boxes wrapped in shiny foil.
Another decoration to consider is tinsel. Strands of tinsel can be hung from the branches to simulate icicles. One tip when hanging tinsel is to hang it in bunches on the edges of the branches. Hanging a single or just a few strands all over the tree will make it look messy.
The fifth step when it comes to decorating a Christmas tree is choosing a type of tree topper. Commercially you can buy tree toppers in just about every Christmas motif imaginable, including angels, snowmen, teddy bears and of course the poinsettia. You can buy Christmas tree toppers that glow with fiber optic diodes spinning, playing tinkling music, and blinking on and off. However, it is not difficult to make your own Christmas tree topper. Perhaps the simplest version is a cardboard star wrapped in aluminum foil. Sometimes the homemade decorations and tree toppers have more sentimental value than the store-bought ones.
The sixth step in this crash course on decorating a Christmas tree is to make sure you disguise the base of the tree with some sort of Christmas tree skirt. This is simply a mat that is draped around the base and on the floor. It can be made of shiny or velvet fabric or you can buy commercially made ones with Christmas motifs in stores and online. Some tree skirts can be very ornate, decorated with sequins and embroidery. However, their original function was to catch the candle droplets from candles on the tree and catch any falling needles from natural Christmas trees.
Another interesting addition, especially if you are a Christian, is to place a small nativity scene under the Christmas tree on the mat. You can buy nativity scenes made of wood, metal or plastic. Also popular is a toy train set that rides in a circle around the Christmas tree.
A seventh and final consideration when it comes to decorating your Christmas tree is a practice called flocking. Flocking is fluffy white stuff, a kind of silly rope that is sprayed all over the tree to simulate snow. This gives just about any tree a real 50’s or country feel and is very unique in the traditions of tree decorating in the United States and Canada. However, it is not recommended for artificial white Christmas trees as the effect would be a bit exaggerated.
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