Creating the perfect Christmas centerpiece

Your Christmas centerpiece is one of the main attractions to your dinner table. Typically, a centerpiece reflects the tone of the occasion and Christmas pieces are usually festive and suited to reflect the holiday season. If you were to go to the store to purchase a Christmas centerpiece you're likely to be taken aback by how expensive centerpieces can be for even the simplest construction of pieces. These can run $50 or more. If you find these prices are more than you want to pay, there is another option to store purchased Christmas centerpieces.

A much less expensive way to go is to make the centerpiece yourself! It's fun, affordable and you can have the satisfaction of creating a masterpiece of your own.

You can express your creative side in many ways when you make your own Christmas centerpiece. The best part of creating your own centerpiece is you can custom design it any way you like.

The first thing you'll want to do is decide what kind of centerpiece you would like. Do you want something really fancy and elaborate or do you want something more on the simple side? Once you've decided what style of centerpiece you want, then you can begin to plan and gather the materials you'll need. Here are a few ideas you can consider as a centerpiece project:

Light the Table with the Elegance of Candles

A very inexpensive centerpiece can be made of candles, greens and pine cones. You can use tall tapered candles or votives, depending on what's your preference, and place them in crystal style candle holders. Beautiful, yet inexpensive, candle holders can be found in any dollar store or the craft store. It can be simple or elaborate as you'd like. I tend to go with simple as it takes up less room on the table. 

For an added touch of elegance, you can make "rings" of greenery to rest at the base of your candle holders to encircle them. These can be pieces of artificial greens or you can gather fresh greens from outside. You can glue mini pine cones and attach small red bows around the greens to make the base look more festive. A glue gun is a perfect tool for this task because it ensures your piece stays together.

For your candles, green, white or reds are always good choices. Gold or silver is usually available too. Or, if you have little ones and/or want to avoid lighting candles, you can go with a flameless candle (they have some good options on Amazon in red, green or white/silver that look pretty).

Scented candles are also nice because they give off a pleasant aroma as you light your centerpiece to make it both visually appealing and smell good too. This kind of centerpiece has a tendency to put everyone in the holiday spirit because of its ability to heighten the senses.

Feature the Beauty of Flowers

Flowers are simple, elegant and there is lots of variety to choose from. You can go with fresh flowers or with silk ones. For a fresh flower, centerpiece you can use any kind of flowers you prefer; I tend to go with reds and whites. 

Carnations are nice because they last longer, but you can use roses or your other favorite floral stems too. All you need to do is arrange your flowers and keep them freshly watered.

If you opt to go with silk flowers you'll likely have more of a variety to choose from. If you visit the floral aisle of your craft store there are tons of types to choose from. 

Essentially, you can shop by color and choose from an entire range of flowers to make your centerpiece really unique. The benefit of the silk is you can use them for decoration the whole season without worrying about wilting flowers or falling petals. You can use clear or green colored rocks to help hold your flowers in one place. If you prefer, you can also use artificially-dried grass to use as a foundation to "plant" your flowers.

Whichever you choose, you'll need a vase to arrange your floral arrangement in. Your vase can be Christmas themed or a simple clear ordinary one will do. I prefer to use a vase with a neck so I can tie some green, red, gold or silver ribbon around the neck of the vase to make it look more festive.

Show Festivity with a Mini Christmas tree

If you want to go on the fancy side you can create a miniature Christmas tree. This isn't hard to do, but it does take a bit of time to decorate, but it looks spectacular when you're done. What you'll need is a piece of styrofoam cone and some artificial greenery which you can purchase at any craft store. 

Wrap the greenery around the styrofoam and secure it in place to shape your Christmas tree. For the ornaments you can buy small bags of "mini" ornaments at the craft store also; try and find ones which come with hooks, but if not you can purchase those separately.

Construction is fairly simple because all you have to do is "hang" your ornaments around the tree. A nice touch is to add some satin ribbon or mini pine cones. For the top of your tree, you can either make a star or you can purchase a small plastic or metallic looking one. These can also be found in the craft store. If an angel is your preference you can either use a small wooden ornament or if you like you can get really creative and make one out of a spool, some paint, yarn and a pipe cleaner for the halo.

These are only a handful of ideas you can try. There are many terrific centerpieces you can make to decorate your Christmas table. Making your own centerpiece is very complementary to your home cooked meal and a satisfying project once you see the beautiful creation you've made.