Christmas Wedding Centerpieces: Aleene’s Craft Christmas Decorations
mong the idea sources for cheap do-it-yourself Christmas wedding centerpiece decorations are the Aleene Jackson crafts books. In this article, I will present a few ideas on how to decorate a wedding table using craft Christmas decorations found in Aleene’s Christmas Craft Quickies (Oxmoor House, 1996) and Best of Aleene’s Creative Living Book 3 (Oxmoor House, 1999). As I will point out below, some of the potential Christmas wedding centerpieces would be a great decoration for a Victorian wedding while others would be better suited to a country wedding theme.
The first of the potential Christmas wedding centerpiece ideas is pictured on page 23 of Aleene’s Christmas Craft Quickies. The elements of the arrangement that rise to prominence are the two burnt brown bag reindeer, the construction of which is the subject of the text on page 22.
Creating these Christmas craft decorations is actually quite simple, with the resulting exterior of the reindeer having a sculpted metal appearance. Crafting your own herd of handmade burnt brown bag reindeer and combining them with other holiday accents as shown in the project picture will provide first-class centerpiece decorations at minimum cost.
The next in the line of centerpiece decoration ideas found in Aleene’s Christmas Craft Quickies is “A Forest of Christmas Trees.” No, it does not entail using actual Christmas trees as wedding table centerpieces. Rather, this Christmas tree decoration idea employs many faux stained-glass trees of varying sizes to create reception table centerpieces. By crafting a number of such faux stained-glass Christmas trees and combining them with other Christmas holiday decorations as shown in the pictures on pages 25 through 27, you can avail yourself of an artfully designed wedding head table decoration idea.
In the book, these craft Christmas decorations are shown with wooden blocks that have been finished with clear wood stain, which is perfectly fine for a Christmassy country theme wedding. To make them wedding reception centerpiece decorations more befitting a Christmassy Victorian theme wedding, paint the wooden blocks in a deep red or in rich jewel colors such as purples, deep berry pinks, or inky blues to give the scheme an added contemporary edge. Adapting the arrangement to a winter theme wedding head table decoration idea is as simple as painting the wooden blocks with opalescent white paint.
Two other potential inexpensive table centerpieces are the decorated round papier-mache boxes shown in the project pictures on pages 76 and 78 of Aleene’s Christmas Craft Quickies. The first of these is a “trees box” with an appearance that places it squarely in the country Christmas decoration category. Its paint scheme features embellished Christmas tree graphics around the sides while the lid is decorated with a simulated green pocket that is likewise accented with a Christmas tree graphic.
The other round box is done up to look like a festive drum complete with a resplendent arrangement of assorted holiday trims up top. Such Victorian Christmas decorations would make visually-arresting yet inexpensive table centerpieces for a Christmassy Victorian theme wedding.
A final idea for cheap do-it-yourself Christmas wedding centerpiece decorations from Aleene is found on page 134 in Best of Aleene’s Creative Living Book 3 where a “twinkling tannenbaum” is pictured. This is another craft Christmas decoration constructed with round papier-mache boxes; four nesting boxes to be exact.
Each box is painted in its own shade of green before getting decked with wooden buttons, wooden stars, and battery-operated white Christmas minilights that protrude through the sides of the boxes from within plus a red-and-white plaid ribbon bow atop the smallest box. The boxes are then glued one on top of the other to form a distinctive folk-art centerpiece decoration.