Ah the festive season! It’s that time of year that you’re feeling tired and in need of a well-deserved break, but also feeling the excitement in the air of all the fun and festivities going on!
Melbourne doesn’t disappoint this time of year (weather excluded – let’s be honest, we may be wearing winter woollies or swimming bathers come Christmas Day - we just don’t know) Weather aside, there is a plethora of Christmassy things to do in the city – Yay!
Since moving here, we’ve started the tradition of putting up a real Christmas tree on December 1st to get into the mood of the season. We then plan what we’ll be doing in throughout December/January to get the most out of this time of year.
Our favourite to date (and hopefully what we’ll be getting up to this weekend) is the free Christmas ArtVo installations at Crown Casino. Last year we had a lot of fun finding and photographing each other at each piece of art.
This year I decided to incorporate the ArtVo pics we took in 2018 to help decorate our house for Christmas (note, you can use any Christmas photos for this - for example, all the Santa pics taken over the years)
I wanted it to have an old school feel, so I decided on a Polaroid and photo strip theme. I used my favourite design app, Canva. This app is available for mobiles and PC and it’s wonderful for creating – from invitations, Instagram stories and even personal inspirational projects. The best part is that there is so much you can do for FREE! I screen shot exactly how I did the design so you can give it a try if you want.
First I selected a 5x7” template (as that was going to be the size of the prints) and I managed to fit two Polaroid frames on each one.
I then added which photos I wanted in each Polaroid frame and resized them so they fitted into the frame. After downloading the files I had them printed.
To make the decorations I simply cut out each Polaroid and placed them in a set of bauble place holders. See the quick video showing the design process.
This was such a fun and super quick project to do and I’ve had so many comments about them. My daughter absolutely loves looking at them and is excited to get more Christmas images this year – we’ll definitely be showcasing 2019’s memories in a similar way next year!
Don’t let your memories become lost in your phone or hard drives. Print them and display them! And don’t forget to have some fun with them!
ArtVo is interactive and immersive art and is definitely on our to-do list for 2020 (now that madam understands the concept a bit better). For more fun things to do in Melbourne around this time of year check out Tot Hot or Not and Busy City Kids.
Have you gotten creative with Christmas photos and your decorations? Let me know in the comments.
xoxo
p.s. Don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing list for more fun ideas like this. When you sign up you get my free “top 5 tips of better visual story telling” to help you capture your family in creative ways, no matter the type of camera you have!