Christmas World - Part Two

I am glad that so many of you enjoyed the photos from the Trend show at the ChristmasWorld trade show.   If you missed that post you can find it HERE.  There was a second creative display area within the ChristmasWorld show.  The photos I have from inside the show are from this area or from stands that allowed a few photos to be taken. 

These paper stars with pierced designs are so pretty with all sorts of patterns pierced in the points.  When we lived in Germany I learned to make similar stars with plain paper.  I want to try to create some of my own designs for next year.  It probably is more cost effective to purchase commercially made stars - it does take a lot of paper to create just one star. 

These Golden Piggies were at the entrance to one of the main halls.  The sign in front of these figures explained an old tradition of fasting on Christmas Eve day.  Children were told that they would be rewarded by the Golden Piggy if they didn't eat all day - waiting for the Christmas Eve feast.

Pigs are also a symbol of good luck in Germany.  When we lived in Germany, my husband was given little pig figures by his coworkers before he took the German driving test - we still have them!

The special display area was in the back of this hall.  There were a series of these "igloo" domes set up with different decorating themes inside.

One featured these chandeliers made of different types of lights.

These watering cans were hanging from the ceiling of another dome.  There were a lot of floral and garden stands in the ChristmasWorld show.  I think some garden centers double up as Christmas shops to help with their slow season.

This dome was full of lavish decorations in peach and lavender.

Several areas had lighted rings to create hanging mobiles of ornaments.

I thought the pattern on these large globes was very pretty.

There were lots of these large flowers made of lights.  The colorful people in the center are walking little dogs...

...pink and purple poodles!

There were plants and more electric flowers around the edges of the dome.

Don't throw away any old lampshades you might have - you can strip them and add tinsel and lights to make sparkling decorations like this.

Outside the domes there were lots of trees - some made of flowers and some with bare branches.  There were also fluffy reindeer with lights.

The trees coming out of the pots of chrysanthemums were pretty but seemed odd to me since we use the mums as fall decorations here in New England.

The trees made of flowers were scattered throughout the display area.

 This photo gives you a sense of the size of the hall - it was enormous and the ceilings were very high.

There were a lot of large Christmas trees along the back wall - along with this "tree lady."  (Yes it looked very odd in person as well!).

Many of the vendors did not want photos to be taken - they are trying to avoid copying of their merchandise.  There were a few that allowed us to take photos.  This white, gold and silver display was one of my favorites.

While the trees are quite lovely, many of them are decorated with items that have tags to help in the placing of orders.  I tried to crop in on an area with no tags but there is one left in this photo.

There were color themes and displays of the ornaments for that scheme.

Purple seemed to be a popular color (remember there were some interesting purple ornaments in the trend show).  It was fun to see all of the variations of purple reindeer hanging along the rail.

This was the tree in the purple area - the large tags are distracting but practical - after all, most of the viewers are there to buy for their shops and need to get through a lot of booths to make their choices.

We saw lots of these fancy flowers that clip on to the trees.  Clips make it easy to place the items just where you want them and they stay put instead of dangling.

In addition to glass and other tree ornaments, there were lots of figures and decorations like these snowmen, polar bears and penguins.

There were many stands with all sorts of outdoor lighting and trees.  This large tree (about 10 feet tall) was one of my favorites.

Mandy and I were looking for items that might work for papercrafters and we were excited to see these large flattened glass ornaments.  We asked about them and found out that the photos inside are not changeable - there was a line of several sizes with about six different cute photos of children.  I am not sure why you would want to hang photos of children that were not in any way related to you on a tree...it would be much nicer if you could customize them with your own family photos!

It was interesting to see that several booths had suspended the trees from bars in the ceiling and then displayed most of the ornaments by hanging them at the bottom of the tree.

The amount of shine and color (more purple here...) was almost overwhelming - you needed to get away from it all after a while.

I wonder how long it takes to set up some of the displays - there are so many breakable items to deal with and they need to be arranged nicely to capture the attention of the buyers who are ordering for their shops.

Some displays may have been done ahead of time and shipped assembled like this tree form stuffed with crumpled paper.

In this close view you can see the ornaments stuck in between the papers.  The texture of the crumpled paper was very interesting.

Another tree in the same area had a center made up of ornaments and bubble wrap cushions on both sides.

I liked these display trees - another thing that you could try on a smaller scale at home.

An elaborate spray in natural colors...

Lots of shiny ornaments put together to make an enormous tree...

And last but not least - an Easter themed tree.

That's all I have to show you from ChristmasWorld.  We didn't get around to all of the halls but it was a great way to fill the first day before the other two shows opened.  The next post I do from the trip will show you some of CreativeWorld (I'll probably need to split that up into several posts).


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