Having great Christmas deocrations doesn’t mean that you have to put away your everyday accessories.  Lamps are a wonderful place to have fun with your holiday decorations.  A simple bow on a lamp turns an every day object into a Christmas decoration.  The chest above features a pair of antique majolica lamps and an antique wooden box as its every day accessories.  For Christmas, we added bows to the bottom of the lamps and left the tails of the bows long to swirl onto the top of the chest.  We opened the box slightly and filled it with a greenery base, and then added a peppermint garland and some tufts of ribbon.  Very festive, and easy to do with objects you already have.  To learn how to tie the bows, watch my bow tying video further down in the blog.  One thing to remember is that you don’t want to completely cover up the lamp with the ribbons.  The base on these lamps is very simple, so we placed the bows there to let the beauty of the majolica be uninterrupted.  Play with the bow placement to make sure where you put it shows off the lamp to the best advantage.  On a tall, columnar lamp, bows work great at the top of the base, just under the neck where the bulb is.

The next photo shows a lamp that is in the form of a bust of Napoleon.  I love the idea of animating every day objects at Christmas, so I added a “sash” across his shoulder which mimics the sash that is actually on the bust.  I placed a “badge” of a glittered and mirrored star on the sash to tie it together.  This is a simple way to create a fun decoration.  I ran two ribbons to make the sash, a yellow and blue plaid, and a coral silk.

The third image is of a brass lamp with brass flowers.  Again, I positioned the bow at the bottom to not cover up the detail of the lamp.  On this lamp with no other color, I was able to add an ornament to the bow.  You can pull a narrow ribbon through the ornament hanger, and tie that on the lamp after the bow has been attached to it.  The addition of an ornament like this works great on solid color metal lamps, wooden lamps, solid color porcelain lamps, glass lamps, and lamps with a gold or silver leaf finish.  It doesn’t work as well on lamps that have designs painted on them.

The next image is the mate to the Napoleon lamp.  It is Eugenie, and she is wearing a “shawl” to keep her warm on cold winter nights.  The shawl is tied with the same badge used on Napolean, but this could also be done with a nice broach or other piece of jewelry.

Have fun with your every day accessories at Christmas time.  Holiday decorating is a great way to look at an object in a completely new light, and a great time to let an ordinary object become extraordinary.