Christmas Canvases – A Great Alternative to Traditional Decorations

Some super-fans of the festivities may already have put their trees up, but if you’re like most people and are waiting for December before decking the halls, then you still have time to consider some fab alternatives to traditional decorations. And yes, that’s right, we’re talking Christmas canvases!

We will, of course, always champion canvas prints when it comes to interior design and decor, but there’s one real benefit of using canvas for your festive furnishings... Ever taken your box of decorations out of the loft/cellar/cupboard, only to find crumpled, creased and broken items that you once spent good money on? Canvases won’t bend or break, are easy to store and won’t fade over the years – giving you many seasons of enjoyment all for one fixed price. You can swap your existing prints and pictures and use the fixings to hang your new yuletide images, draping tinsel over them for extra glitz!

So, what are you waiting for? Get creative this Christmas and choose one or more of the following ideas for a great alternative to traditional decorations...

Children’s Christmas pictures – get out the pens and paints, or fire up your computer software and let the kids go wild with winter scenes, cheerful Santas, little red robins, reindeers and snowmen. You can sketch out a rough outline for younger artists or let their imaginations run lose if they’re a bit older – just ask them to draw a selection of Christmas pictures one weekend, scan them onto the computer (if the designs aren’t already digitally based) and send them to use for printing. That’s a whole selection of handmade, homemade decorations that will also hold lots of lovely personal memories.

If you’re not feeling up to creating your own art, you can always choose from your stock of family Christmas photos, and exchange these for your everyday pictures. This works particularly well if you want to feel family close to you at Christmas who are out of reach or who have passed on – again, some wonderful memories of all the happy times you’ve spent together at this special time of year.

Head out to the shops or a haberdasher and buy or create some Christmas costumes – then arrange a family photo shoot! Stick on some Christmas songs and arrange a family photo shoot – who can resists printed photos of a baby Rudolf, mini-Santa or Christmas angel?

Squirreled away some old favourite Christmas cards for safe keeping but no idea what to do with them? Choose a selection of the very best and scan them onto your computer and simply use someone else’s amazing art work to display on your walls!

Combine a couple of the ideas above and design a digital or hand-drawn Christmas tree – but instead of baubles, crop some family photos into circle shapes and use these to decorate the tree. If you want to go large and you’re worried about the print quality, ask us for advice, or stick cut out photos onto a big sheet of paper that you’ve painted a tree onto and take it to your local printers – they will have larger scanners and can give you a saved version on disk to send over for printing.

Unconventional, yes, but these fantastically original ideas will stand the test of time and become your favourite decorations for years to come! Have yourself a perfectly personalised Christmas!