Placing Decorations on a Christmas Tree

Denise Willard: Hi! My name is Denise Willard with Decor by Denise and today I am here showing you how to decorate your tree for the holidays. Right now, we are going to talk about the core of the tree and how to go about applying decorations. So, let s get started, first of all I am going to start with my largest items that I am going to place on my tree. What you want to do is place your large items first starting at the top in a zigzag fashion because that gives your eye something different look at, as you look at the tree, you don t want everything to be evenly spaced, you don t want to be totally symmetric because that is sort of boring. So, when your eye looks at the tree, if everything is on a diagonal and you have the biggest items spaced out appropriately, then your eye gives, it has something really nice to look at and it makes it much, much more interesting. So, we don t want to just place things on the tree haphazardly, we want to actually make it pop. So, let s go ahead and start placing our larger items and what I typically do is instead of just using like a poinsettia by itself, I couple it with an item behind it like these snow sprays and that gives it the more pop and makes the tree really stand out. So, let s go ahead and get started, so first of all I am going to start up here in the left hand corner and apply to the sky by placing my snow branch in here. I typically place them so that they are more perpendicular to the tree and then you can spread them out a little bit, but there are little bit tougher the top, just simply because the branch there is not as much width here, so it s a little bit more challenging. So, just play with it a little bit and you will find the right home for it. Do not worry about seeing the pieces in here; we will cover that up later as we apply more ornaments. So, let me get another one here, another poinsettia. So, now what we are going to do is, since we have applied this guy and this here, we are going to apply our next one over here, working the diagonal as we go down. Okay, so let s go ahead and apply our second item and what we want to do again is place it on the diagonal as we move across the tree. Let s go ahead and insert him in here, find a good home for it, it s a little bit challenging as I said at near the top, but it s okay. So, see these guys give it a little bit more pop behind the little plant there. So, now that we have placed our key in big items that are really major focal points for this tree, we also want to move onto the next biggest items, I have actually three of these for this tree. Typically, you just pick one or two big items, maybe three, for three of this size. If you have a larger tree, maybe you do five and they are little bit bigger and these will be key to give it again a little bit of pop and little bit of variation. So, I want to place these on the tree in the key areas and typically we place one near the top of trees so, we will go ahead and do that, they are always on angle. So, we will do that, so again it gives that pop at the top, more attached, with these guys you want to be very careful to secure it very well because they are very fragile if they do fall. Again, we want it be symmetric, so that is what we are building out here that is why it was placed up near the top. So, this one we are going to put in this general area here, because again we are playing off where symmetry coming down. So, place it in this general area and let me find a good branch for it. The next item we want to look at is our next bigger item, which is our snowflake. So, I want to apply these as well to various parts of the tree to give it that extra special pop. Typically, we place these again in the key areas up near the top of the tree, up to the left of the tree and as we work our way down. So, that is where you want to really use those as well as one in the front. So, let s go ahead and apply this guy in this general area, so I want to find some good branches to secure with because it is very large and need some support. So, there we go and it always good to try and place it in front of light, so the light shine through it. So, let s go on and start applying some reds. What we want to do is start to break up the white and the crystal look of this tree and make it really pop with some reds. Up until this point, we haven t used a hook, a tree ornament hook, but we may have to use it for these guys although, most of them have a long chord so, it s not really necessary and these guys have clips to make them secure the tree really well. So, let s go ahead and apply key to these guys, we want to break up some of the whites, so we definitely need some red in this area, here as you can see there is too much white and silver going on, so let s put some red in this general area to give it some pop. Then we are going to apply some red in this area because again we have too much of the white and the silver going on. So, let s go ahead and apply this guy here, you want to wrap it around several times and at the branches impede upon your ornament just bend them other way. Great, so you have got a few pieces of red, let s add a little cardinal here and again he needs to be near the top because again we have got a space here, that need some red because it has too much white and silver. So, we will go ahead and apply him in this general area. So, the next thing we want to look at is applying some of items that have more height versus width and for those items we have some teardrops here and some beautiful Christmas trees and they are really gorgeous, they shimmer really nicely, so we want to go ahead and apply those, you want to try to find branches that are typically have some space between then, so these guys can hang beautifully. So, let s go ahead and these we want to put near the front because they have got lots of sparkle, so we will put one in this general area and there we go. So, we have got a beautiful tree. Now, we are going to add our teardrop which again, this is a beautiful because it has multicolored aspects to it and this is a great space for this kind of ornament because again we have got some open space here, so you just have to look at your tree and look at how, it plays out because each tree is different and basically just look for the open spaces where these guys would really shine and as you can see, it s a perfect space for that guy because it has got lots of room to move around. Now, what we want to do is add some pinecones because again, we want to infuse some of that bringing the outside in trend and we want to add that into our tree. So, let s go ahead and some of our pinecones to the necks and we want to add them like we want something in this area again because we need it breakup some of the silver, the white that is going on. So, let s add a pinecone in this general area, we will go ahead and do that. Well, typically we do them on an angle, just so it looks like it just floating in the tree which it is. So, our next step is to then add some of our berries the necks because what you will see, we do not have enough red going on, we have got a lot of white and it s sort of blurriness, like in interior where everything matches, it s sort of isn’t very interesting to your eye. Also, we want to add another dimension of some horizontal lines to the tree. So, we are going to add these berries to give us that aspect. Let s go ahead and add some in this area because again, we have got too much white going on, let s put in this general area, here. Don t be shy, if you put it in, you do not really like it stand back and take a look and if you don t like it, just go back and adjust. So, see now it s trying to build out and add it a little bit a pop of color and it really adds a new dimension to the tree. So, once we have built these core elements, we want to then finish up the tree, we will fill in the spaces etcetera, but before we do that, let s go ahead and add a few of our whimsical items that really make this tree our tree versus someone else s tree. So, I am going to go ahead and add one of my favorites which is for my little doggy Scotty and one of my little snowman which I do work. So, I go ahead and put him here and he hangs really nicely there and he is very cute. So, then we are going to add our little snowman, he is very large, so we want him to have a nice home, we need a space as pretty big and I see something here that looks nice. He is a heavy ornament too, so we have to make sure the branch can hold him. So, just have to be careful if you have a live tree, just make sure that the branches are secure enough or place it further back on the branch to make sure he has the right support and there you go. Now, how cute is that. So, we have now accomplished decorating the tree, we have actually added the toper or the pop at the top, so to speak that we talked about before. Now, we have decorated the core of the tree, the one thing you should note is not to forget the back of your tree, when you are decorating which we didn’t t show you today but we want to make sure you do that, because the view from the outside is really important. So, that is a little bit about how you go about decorating your tree, now let s focus on the bottom of the tree or underneath the tree.