Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Gift Wrapped Boxes and Fancy Cakes.

Here is a sneak peek at some of the props for the Hillside Shopping Centre Christmas window display. I wanted to go with VERY bright colours that are not associated with Christmas.

The red box with the purple ribbon is going into a small window display advertising the shopping centre's gift cards that are for sale at the customer service desk. The rest of the parcels will be on the floor underneath a banquet table filled with cakes and pastries displayed on cake stands and plates.

It is quite surprising that once you add a little sparkle from tinsel wire, some ice encrusted evergreens, and  a few comically twisted bottle brush trees It all says, "Merry Christmas"! I have added some very un-Christmassy touches to the tops of the gift boxes such as fireworks and out of season fruit but those traditional touches pull it all together.


I bought this giant ice cream cone bank last year at Christmas. I put a strand of fresh water pearls in it for my wife. I had bought three bags of fresh water pearls at Salvation Army for about $6 and strung them all together into about a 30" necklace, that was a very good buy to say the least!

All of the parcels are wrapped with plastic table cloths from the dollar store. Not a very green choice but the colours are wonderfully gaudy. A banana, an apple, an ear of corn, purple grapes, three ranunculus blossoms, and three purple iris; what more could say, "Merry Christmas"?

The magician's hand with wand is a very old prop that I liked so much I kept it. The playing card quite mysteriously floats above the parcel.

This is just a sample of the cakes that will be going on the banquet table. The cakes set the colour palette for the window. I made all of the cake stands as well from wooden candle pillars, wooden plates, and gold plastic chargers.

There are these five mini cakes as well as pastries, fruit, and candy that will be used to fill in any spaces on the table and on this stand.

I bought the stand at Sally Ann. The first day I saw it I carried it around the store and just before I was going to pay for it I put it back. I didn't think that I could use it. It was an ugly brown stand with gold printed brown leatherette on the tray areas. I bought it the next day, spray painted it with browns, burgundies, purple, and a dusting of gold to allow the other colours to show through and, "Voila", a very interesting gilt surface that doesn't yell "GOLD". The aqua paint that I mixed was a happy accident that works beautifully with the gilt surface.

The window will be going in tomorrow. I will take pictures of it and do a post about it in the next few days.

1 comment:

ceecee said...

I love the bright colors and Seuss-ish arrangements on top. I've always liked unconventional decorations that still say 'Merry Christmas'. So Festive! The cakes are superb. You were smart to go back and get that table...it worked out great. Enjoy the season, Len.
Catherine