TO BUILD A CHRISTMAS TREE A Master Designer Shows How It Is Done Step-By-Step
	DECEMBER 2005

by Oswy
Photos by Russell Byrne

The tradition of the holiday tree is older than America. The miracle of modern marketing has moved the Christmas tree far beyond its homemade-garlands-and-strings-of-popcorn American roots. Christmas trees of almost any size and description can be adorned with decorations that are nearly as boundless as people’s tastes in their variety.

You can buy artificial or real trees, flocked, lightly flocked, or natural green. Choose from among blue spruce, Douglas fir, sugar pine, princess pine, needle pine, and even pencil trees — nicknamed “Charlie Brown trees.” A pencil tree’s sparse branches make this a good choice for people desiring an understated effect.

Perhaps you have invested a lot in purchasing your home and have furnished it to convey a sense of stylishness and grace. If so, it is logical for you to create a Christmas tree that will be appropriate to its surroundings. We’ll show you how.

Before anything else, you must choose a theme and a color scheme for your tree. The tree pictured in the illustrations for this article follows a traditional theme, which is by far the most popular.

If you want to take off in a non-traditional direction, you can create a colorful festive theme, jewel-tone (with accents of purple and gold), or a high-fashion silver and black tree. I used finials, roosters, hens, cowbells, and wooden signs on my kitchen theme tree.

The most important thing to remember at each step of the process is to resist adding anything to the tree that conflicts with the theme or that clashes with your chosen color scheme. You wouldn’t add lace to denims or mix roses with oranges. Don’t make a mixed-up tree.

But keeping that in mind, feel free to break the rules and have fun. “I went to design school,” someone told me recently, “and they told me about the rules.” There’s really only one rule; Does it look good? If so, just do it.

You can create a professional quality Christmas tree by following the steps below:

1 Choose an Appropriate Size Tree
A tree must be proportional to the available area. The tree used for the illustrations in this article is about eight feet tall, which lets it fit perfectly into a corner of our galleria with its 10-foot ceiling. A 10-12 foot tree would be appropriate in a room with volume ceilings and placed in front of a window or in the center of a foyer.

Use either artificial or fresh trees, flocked or green, according to your taste. The tree in the illustration is artificial, and had the advantage that it came already flocked.

After unpacking or untying the tree, spread apart the bigger limbs and fluff out the little branches.

2 String Lights
One of the big differences between Christmas trees created by a professional and those by an amateur is the number of lights. A tree of the size in the illustration contains about 800 lights.

Clear lights convey a quiet and elegant effect. These can be twinkling or steady according to your taste.

You can choose colored lights for a more informal festive effect. These are particularly good for a children’s room or for a tree that children help decorate.

If you string your own lights, be sure to read and follow the rules and guidelines on the packages.

3 Add Vegetation
We added a number of glitter branches to the tree in the illustration. You could also add colored leaves. Just be sure to maintain your color coordination. We used traditional red, gold, white, and green trimmings for our example. Add the ornamentation according to your personal taste. The effect can be crowded or open according to preference.

4 Add Flowers
Since we’re showing a traditional theme, we added traditional Poinsettia blossoms. For other themes you might use fruit branches, or fruit garlands. Or you could use berries — either in bunches, in garlands, or in sprays.

5 Add Ornaments
Select ornaments that go along with your theme, on one hand, and with your selected color scheme, on the other. Following our traditional theme we used stars, stockings, bells, balls, and Christmas-tree-shaped ornaments.

The tree will look more elegant if you avoid too much variety; it is better to use a number of each ornament, than only one each of a number of ornaments.

6 Add Ribbons and Bows
You can add ribbons and bows of a wide variety of materials, including velvet, lace, and sheers. Feel free to use any type of material and any design pattern. Once again, be sure to select your ribbons and bows to follow both the color scheme and the theme.

7 Add Figures
Faces and figurines make a nice addition to almost any theme. We could have used Frosty, angels, sleighs, reindeer, or winter birds (cardinals and sparrows). Many designs and choices are available. Choose sizes and colors to taste.

8 Tree Topper
Even though an angel traditionally sits atop the Christmas tree, I’ve chosen a Santa stocking. Other possibilities include stars, fairies, feathers, branches, twigs, and ornaments.

9 Tree Skirt
To round out the effect put a skirt under the tree and surround it with gift packages, design blocks, stuffed animals, trains, a Christmas village — whatever you like.

You can buy many of the things we’ve been talking about at department stores and craft shops everywhere. Everything is also available at Vertu Galleria. Stop by to see other examples of my work, including the tree I created for the example. Nine other trees are on display, each one with a unique theme of its own.

My work will be featured on the Summerset Christmas Tour on Dec. 3 and 4 (Saturday and Sunday). I decorated the home of Jeanie Philbrick at 613 Pamona Drive, Brentwood.

I also designed the San Jose Valley Monte League Christmas Show, sponsored by Macy’s, and held in the Doubletree Hotel at the airport. The dates for this annual fundraising event are Nov. 29 to Dec. 2. Call for reservations.

Have fun decorating your home this holiday season.