Getting ready for the New Year: choosing a Christmas tree garland for the house
Starting from the second half of December, in private homes and office buildings, the working mood is slowly changing to the pre-holiday mood. Everyone is starting to actively prepare for the meeting with Santa Claus, and what is the New Year without bright illumination and colorful decorations? How to dress up the forest beauties so that a stately bearded old man will certainly notice them and will not forget to hide gifts under the branches? We offer a small overview of Christmas tree garlands that can be used to decorate not only a Christmas tree, but also the room itself.
Green garland - a budget option for a Christmas tree for an apartment
To make a Christmas tree garland of branches, you will need, in fact, the pine or spruce branches themselves. They can be secured with wire to a corrugated pipe, which bends well, making it easy to turn the garland into a wreath or give it a different shape.
To decorate a living garland, cones, toys and snowflakes are also hooked between the branches, and the garland itself is wrapped in a shiny "rain" or colored ribbon.
LED garland - unique lighting for a Christmas tree, at home and not only
At the time of our mothers and grandmothers, Christmas trees were decorated with garlands consisting of incandescent lamps. It is good that science does not stand still and today these unsafe decorations can only be found in boxes with unnecessary things in the attic. If one of the lamps burned out, the whole garland would go out of order and jeopardize the holiday mood at least. If there was no spare light bulb at home, they had to throw the Olivier cut and urgently run to the store in search of it. And to find a garland on December 31, you see, it is very problematic even now.
In addition, incandescent lamps emitted a lot of heat, as a result of which not only the plafonds that framed them could melt, but also the Christmas tree decorations. Often there were cases of fire and the tree itself. Fortunately, today you can forget about such problems - incandescent bulbs have been replaced by economical and safe LED bulbs.
Among the advantages of LED Christmas tree garlands, it is worth noting that they:
- consume little electricity;
- they emit little heat, therefore they do not heat up;
- failure of one lamp or even a whole link of the garland does not affect its operation - the rest continue to glow.
An equally important point is the fact that most of these modern garlands have several modes of operation, which allows you to make your tree unique. This can be uniform shine or glare, multi-colored lamps or solid garlands (blue, white, purple, and others).
We decorate and illuminate the site with a Christmas tree garland
Despite the wide selection of LED garlands, old methods are still used to decorate Christmas trees on the square. Whole bunches of incandescent lamps, which are hung along the streets on special cables, are especially relevant. Such illumination can be used not only on the eve of the New Year holidays, but also for evening street lighting.
When using outdoor Christmas tree lights, make sure that they are firmly attached and have the required degree of protection (at least IP44).
Separately, it is worth mentioning the novelty of New Year's street illumination called "Snowfall" ("Falling snow"). Outwardly, it is a transparent cord with long icicle tubes hanging on it. The LEDs in the "icicles" light up one by one, moving the speck-snowflake along the tube from top to bottom, making this original LED Christmas tree garland really look like falling snow or rain.
How to choose a cordless garland?
When buying a luminous decoration for a Christmas tree, room or outdoor space, you should consider the following factors:
- For the street, you need to take only street garlands, while for the room, simpler and cheaper interior illumination is used.
- The total length of the garland, so that you do not have to use several pieces and a large number of adapters and extension cords.
- The number of bulbs and the distance between them.
- Colors.
- The presence of programs for switching to different modes (blinking, smoothly changing colors, alternately using several shades).
- Sufficiently high degree of protection.
- Plug type.
- Power consumption from the network.
Some Christmas tree garlands also have additional fasteners (clothespins, clips), with which they can be firmly attached to a tree or other structures.
A holiday that is always with you
If you celebrate the New Year at home, then it is quite clear that they start preparing and decorating the premises in advance: the Christmas tree is placed closer to the outlet so that there is where to turn on the garlands, and they are hung around the house, focusing on the further possibility of connecting to the network.
But what to do if at the last moment the holiday is transferred, for example, to nature? There is no electricity in the forest, and if you want to decorate a Christmas tree growing near the house, you always need to take into account whether the cord length is enough to the nearest power source. Battery powered Christmas tree lights are just the perfect choice for these situations. The beautiful LED light does not depend on the mains and runs on conventional AA batteries. There is probably only one drawback of such illumination: the absence of flickering and the ability to change the mode (the garland works in one mode).
When purchasing such a decoration, it is worth grabbing a couple of sets of spare batteries as well, since when they are low, the light becomes dim.
How to make a garland yourself?
Surely we all still remember how, in our distant school years, on the eve of the New Year's matinee, the whole family cut and glued garlands on the school Christmas tree. Each student had to pass a certain length of a chain of rings or unfolding snowflakes, which were then hooked onto a tree or used to decorate a festive hall. What can we say about simple snowflakes - they also had to be cut a lot.
DIY Christmas garlands are often made today, attracting children to this activity. What could be more enjoyable than being together with your parents? There are many options for such crafts, from simple paper garlands that children can do, to more complex models, which cannot be assembled without mother's help.
From simple and uncomplicated decorations for the Christmas tree and at home, you can make the following garlands from colored paper:
- A chain of rings. The chain links are glued together from thin strips, connecting them together.
- A chain of hearts. Hearts are folded from two strips, at the same time fixing them together with paper clips.
- From stripes. The cut strips are laid out parallel to each other and sewn in the center with a connecting line.
- Simple garlands of snowflakes. Both white and multi-colored snowflakes strung on a thread look very beautiful.
- Volumetric garlands of origami figures.Various figures (Christmas trees, snowflakes, animals, stars) are connected with a common rope or suspended from it separately.
By the way, small figures can be put on the bulbs of an ordinary LED garland.
If after decorating the Christmas tree there are unused toys, especially balls, you can make a very effective Christmas tree garland of balls from them. To do this, the balls are put on a thin wire or strung on a long satin ribbon, firmly fixing them. Such a lush garland will serve as a decoration for the room.
If there is a little extra time in the pre-holiday bustle, you can also start making an airy and openwork garland of balls. For this you will need:
- twine or other thick thread;
- small balloons;
- PVA glue.
First, the balloons are inflated to the desired size. Then they are wrapped around them with a rope or thread, weaving it at the discretion of their imagination and forming a beautiful pattern. It is not necessary to apply very tightly - the ball should turn out to be openwork, with gaps. The finished workpiece is well dipped in glue. When it dries, the ball is punctured and pulled out.
You can add glitter to the glue to make the balls look fabulous.
The balloons obtained in this way are collected in a garland or hung individually on a Christmas tree. You can also put them on a ready-made garland.
There are many more ways to make homemade Christmas tree garlands, they are all beautiful in their own way, and choosing the best one is quite difficult. It all depends only on creative inspiration.
In the process of decorating the house and the Christmas tree, the mood automatically becomes festive. Each of us, somewhere in the depths of our souls, wakes up that feeling that comes from a distant childhood, when you still believe in miracles and wait for your innermost desires to come true. And it doesn't matter what decorations and garlands hang on the tree, shop or self-made, the main thing is to believe that all the good things will come true, and the bad ones will remain in the outgoing year and will never disturb you again. Happy New Year everyone!