The Making of the 2014 Holiday Window.

This year the pressure was on for the Holiday window.  Everyone loved the window so much last year, I had to make sure this one was as least as good ;)  EEEK!  Right? So I toiled over what to do.  I have been trying to plan this since the beginning of September and...well....nothing.  I was totally blank.  No ideas....period.  Nothing worse than hitting a wall.  Writers block so-to-say.  Time was running out.  I needed to have these windows in place before the Downtown Holiday Open House / Christkindle weekend.  Then, like magic one week before the deadline, it hit me.  As my personal facebook friends read, "That moment when the inspiration you have been waiting for lights up your brain like a clear night sky far away from the smothering incandescent haze of civilization." It finally came to me.  :)  My inspiration was a little complicated, but made perfect sense to me.  It was Art Nouveau  - meets a Victorian Parlor with a Moorish influence  - meets  - the natural beauty of our local great outdoors. Sounds a little funny I know, but in my brain I could see it as clear as coulde be.  Finally!  lol.  

So I immediately set out on my adventure.  My fist step was to pull out all of my supplies that I already had to work with from previous displays.  Some could say I'm a hoarder, some could say I'm resourseful...I prefer the latter.  It turned out that I had almost everything I needed already.  How wonderful.  Next step was to go out collecting.  I lucked out with a holiday weekend and the most beautiful weather to gather all of the items on my nature list.  Grapevine, Cattails, thistles, osage oranges, horse chestnuts, pine cones of different shapes and sizes,  and acorns.  It took the majority of the day, but with my family in-tow, we managed to find everything we needed and almost all of it within the city limits.  Yes I was the crazy lady jumpling out of my car to load it up with what most would consider garden garbage, but hey, you gotta do, whatcha gotta do! (And I had the cutest helper ever. ) 

Next step was to go purchase the few things I did not already have for the project.  Some twine in red, green and natural, and some silver, gold, white, and black spray paint.  (All of which are now in my stock pile of supplies for future projects)  The weather was beautiful so spray painting my newly found pine cones and thistles along with my freshly created grapevine wreaths was no problem at all.  The paint dried quickly which this time of year is a huge gift.  I went home and promptly set to work on the hand made creations that were going to be accompanying the natural and found items.  I made a series of feathers as well as some black and white "tile" out of paper and some lush tassels.  They were super fun to make.  I love working with paper, it can become almost anything you can dream up.

So Wednesday morning, I got right to it and started the window painting.  I discovered how much fun this process was about two window displays ago, now I can't seem to complete a display without the glass being painted.  This time the paint was where the Art Nouveau reference was going to be most obvious .  It is acting as a framing device for the whole window scene just as it would in a poster from the same influence.  It also is where you will find the first hint of that Moorish inspiration.

From there it was all just a matter of arranging, hot gluing and tying.  That part went together in about two days.  I felt like a bit of a contortionist this time around since this design had to all be done in place.  I was squished up against the glass for most that time...not the most flattering I'm sure for passers by...lol...but once again...you gotta do whatcha gotta do!!! All in all,  I'm pretty happy with how everything works together.  You will have to stop by to see all of the details in person.  They are hard to capture in the photos.