How Winter Festive Decor Becomes Daily Style

With these ideas, the holiday blues will come and go, and you wouldn’t even feel them!

Glittering, sequinned, or tinsel décor, and rich colours of the winter festive season certainly bring their own charm. In fact, you might reason that since ‘tis is truly the season, when else can they ever be used?

Granted. But the seasonal specificity can also lead to unintentional hoarding, year on year. So, here’s making an interesting case for festive décor that can grace your space everyday instead!

MODERN ABSTRACT TOUCHES WITH FESTIVAL MOTIFS

If you think about it, winter festivities aren’t quite over with Christmas, and ringing in the New Year. Cultural roots and affinities, and even the fact that you’re in the Southern or Northern Hemisphere during a ‘typically winter’ celebration can influence the way you decorate your space.

For instance, it’s  the Year of the Rabbit, according to Chinese New Year traditions. If the way the rabbit is described in those traditions resonates with you, what could rabbit symbolisms look like in your decoration?

Otherwise, It could be just the characteristic pine tree outline to suggest the Christmas tree, or abstract snowflake cut-outs.

The form is clean and abstract, and there’s a relative lack of extra embellishment. The colours are also relatively muted, and the texturing is subtle.

Suddenly, typically festive details have transformed into free-form details. They apply anywhere they personally make sense, and at any time. Something like  beautiful ‘filler décor’ as well, but without trying too hard.

There can be clusters of your favourite winter festival motifs on mantelpiece corners, desks, or on and near books. The form is free-interpretation form, so it can pretty much be whatever you want it to be, and the focus is on the paper artistry instead – say, origami or papier-mâché.

Garland art in particular corners, or going completely wall to wall in the more recreational or casual spaces of the home is a great way to use paper or card or cardboard motifs that went up on your Christmas tree.

CELEBRATION WREATHS AS SMALL DIY WONDERS

The wreath is amongst the most inventively reinvented winter festive decorations. It’s the simple shape that captures imaginations. From there, seasonal elements and important talismans can make the wreath a personal domestic symbol, if you’re going to set it on the main door of your home, or your bedroom door.

The typical red-green wreath combination can be practically replaced with any other that you like. All-white wreaths are still ‘wintry’ but they’re certainly more versatile and can transcend the very seasonal décor restrictions it typically represents.

Wreaths are a great spin on biophilia-inspired art. We vote for eucalyptus leaves, vine twigs, and pampas grass. But, you can experiment by foraging for seasonal foliage in your local area, if the regulations permit you to do so in local parks or forest parks. We always uphold taking only as much as is needed from Nature for such activities.

The typical add-ons to wreaths, such as balls and bells, can be simply replaced with decorative lotus root heads,  berries, interesting shrub or floret pieces, and even ribbons fashioned out of leftover scrap fabric.

SO WE DON’T HAVE TO ‘PINE’ FOR THE BEAUTY…

If you’re visiting a place where the kids are going to find natural pine cones strewn about, encourage them to collect the clean and safe ones. Like wreaths, they’re another example of typically winter décor that you can repurpose in different ways, any season of the year.

Keep the kids involved in the pine cone art-craft as well! You may like to redo the typical ‘knick-knack’ corner with pine cones for a rustic, yet very romantic and sophisticated touch. Use them as they are, or painted and spray painted here and there, in bowls. Add tumbled crystal stones, dried flowers or potpourri, if you like.

A little research on DIY pine cone crafts reveals clever ideas for bowls and candle holders made of pine cones themselves, or animal inspired artwork. Here the natural arrangement of the pine ones doubles up for scales or feathers – think squirrels, flamingos, owls, pangolins and hedgehogs… these make for adorable gifts or stationery accessories too!

LIGHTS WE THOUGHT WE DIDN’T NEED?

Fairy lights easily help upgrade the style quotient for kids’  playrooms and bedrooms. They can be draped around the window sills, their study tables, and headboards; or be used to make little ‘nests,’ dotted around some favourite spots. Needless to say, health and safety comes first in such matters of bulbs, wiring, and electricity, especially with very young children.

Geometric shape LED  mood lamps, especially those levitating ones,  inspired by the moon, clouds, stars, stags and wolves, or the cosmos-wilderness aesthetic in general, apply rather tastefully across winter celebrations.

But, there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t hold their own any other time of year. Their uniqueness does all the talking for them!

FABRIC ART IS ‘WOVEN INTO’ OUR SUBCONSCIOUS

Festive fabrics – even from a modern minimalist, or typically minimalist perspective – can mean different things for different people. For some, it’s purely a monochrome palette focus: the classic whites, greys, almonds, will do, while for others it’s more about the chalky pastels.

Some would agree that understated glamour with metallic thread work, scattered beads and sequins, or metallic paint fits the formula.

And the festive mood takes off on a totally different tangent if quirk, and some controlled kitsch is your thing: dancing mosaics; outlandish embossing, printing, or pencil and watercolour details  inspired by animals and plants; surrealist and retrofuturist depictions of industrialism and art; along with deconstructed geometrics  may all cover under this category.

Whatever your fabric of choice, the focus area in terms of décor and styling is around scale. The popular preference is framed fabrics. But there’s a lot of fun to be had, folding, pleating, rolling the rules, when it comes to fabric art installations on your walls. These aren’t the ones with frames, rather, they’re just with the hanging support, be it vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

Then there’s the room partition, made entirely of fabric, or additionally supported by wood, or subtle bead strings.

If we begin looking at the decorations we invest in as ways to celebrate the little things everyday, it’s incredible to see the directions that creativity can take !