I love vintage ornaments and Christmas decor.  The patina of time just adds something special to them whether its a bit of fading, tinge of tarnish or the flattening of colors into a mellowed palette.  Sadly, the good stuff is expensive, fragile and gasp, you better not re-craft it into anything but its original purpose.  So, using some techniques I've developed over the years, during my stints as a department store visual designer, I cheat and make my own "vintage" using less than the best.  I'll use dollar store decorations.

The difference between today's ornaments and vintage ones is more than just time.  It's materials.  Many old fashioned ornaments were made from real metal, metal flake coated glass and cellulose lacquer.  Real metal tarnishes and cellulose breaks down, hence the ornaments become duller and loose their vibrancy.  Today's inexpensive ornaments are mostly blow molded plastics coated with mylar flake glitter and/or tinted with acrylic lacquer.  None of which will age, or dull naturally.

To recreate the vintage look we have to either create the illusion of age or deconstruct the finish somehow.  Here are some simple ways to do it. 

Using a soft lint free rag rub on a coat of pigmented paste wax.  The wax I use is Howard's in a dark oak color.  The wax dulls the mylar like finish and alters the colors to more of an antique hue.  Fake silver becomes more champagne and gold becomes more brassy.  The snow like mylar glitter starts to resemble glass and Mica glitter which was used in the early 1900's.  The paste wax can be buffed once it is dry and removed selectively with either steel wool or a scotch brite pad.  Notice on the mylar plastic tinsel tree and wreath how the paste wax makes the tinsel look like the old silver and tin used in days gone by.  I love it.

Using a combination of the steps above, I distressed a bunch of ornaments in a variety of sizes.  Most of them I bought from the Dollar Store, Target, Michaels and Wallyworld aka Walmart.   Keep an eye out for heavy discounting as the season moves on and start working on next years big wreath or faux vintage assemblage.   Using the ornaments from this post, here's what I created.  Share with me your newly vintage ornaments over on Facebook or Instagram or drop a comment or questions below.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from me to you!

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday when it comes to decor.  As an experienced prop maker, I want to give kudos to some outstanding haunters of Halloween.  You can see these top 5 and all of my frightening picks in my Pinterest board "Embellished Halloween"

Seriously talented make-up FX artist Lex Fleming stuns with her library of tutorials.

Over on Wannabite Nate takes you through the steps to create these near black beauties.

Photographer turned Halloween illusionist Christopher McKenney captures the creepy.  Learn more about McKenney here or visit his Flickr to dig (get it) deeper.

One of Martha Stewarts creative monsters offers up a DIY about casting hands.   Having created cast props, I do warn you it's messy but worth it's weight in ghouls.

While the first photo is what captivated me, I couldn't find the source...broken link pinners, bad form!  But, I did find a similar look DIY from House of Dewberry, I guess Dewberry do good.

For more haunted hits check out my Pinterest Board, it's to die for (get it)?

I needed a few New Years Eve poppers to display as a centerpiece, so I scraped up some of my holiday craft left overs and cranked up the computer.  Rather than have to adorn them with sequins, go glitter crazy and go through great efforts to use a  lot of fabric colors and textures, I scanned the ingredients and printed them.  The prints were super easy to cut up, fold, fan and glue.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that stuff like beads, glitter, tinsel ribbon and glass crystals were added to finish them off.

Prior to tying them off you could fill them with candy, glitter or encouraging notes for the new year.   If you're like me.... hiding treats in these might prevent bad snacking.  After all the New Years Resolutions start in less than a week. {yikes}

So don't recycle those empty  wrapping paper tubes and download yourself a set of the papers below.      

My younger self was a professional window and holiday display designer and visual merchandiser for high end department stores.    20 years ago when I left that world to start Embellishments Studio, I retained a few of my freelance clients.  Flash forward to 2016, I've created dozens of trims for several clients.   The trims that quickly comes to nostalgic memory are the ones I've created for my client in Vancouver, Washington called Willows.   It's a clothing and accessories boutique.

Just for fun!  I'm sharing my original Holiday spray labels.  For me they represent all the years I've spent creating retail Holiday trims.  I think of them as mementos.  For you, they can be a fun item to display, create hijinx with your Elf on a Shelf or beef up your Jack Frost street credibility. 
The images are sized for a traditional spray can.  If you need them larger just dial up your print percentage.  I recommend using empty spray cans of course.  You wouldn't want lil' ones spraying black spray on your frosty windows.

Take a long hard look in your recycling bin.  It's crawling with creatures great and small.  Hopefully, not real ones, but fun future faux ones.  With a little imagination, and some easy DIY instructions, you can create a zoo of animals out of common recyclables.

Welcome to my latest craft DIY brought to you by my friends at Rosenberry Rooms Very Rosenberry Blog.

I'm two weeks into my blog hop experiment with the Flip-Pal© mobile scanner.  Last week I challenged it by taking it outdoors to scan garage siding and old fence boards to create a "reclaimed wood" look reindeer and frame  http://embellishmentskids.blogspot.com/2011/12/men-scan-2-blog-hop-flip-pal-review-and.html.  The scanner runs on batteries and offers the option to remove the lid so you can direct scan any flat object. So, I thought I'd scan a few unusual things in the studio and use the images to create a vintage look Believe sign so Santa knows the Christensen family is ready and waiting.