Polished Casual Christmas Mantle

Did you catch my big DIY Airstone Fireplace Reveal last week?  If not, you may want to check it out before you read this post.  Today, I wanted to show you some up close and personal details of our mantle all decorated for Christmas.  In the picture below, you can see the final mantle when I was all finished tweaking it.  Some of the pictures in this post are without the lights and the chalkboard art printable.  I thought the mantle was complete, but after a couple of days, I decided to add just a little more to it, and I am in love with the end result!  It is my favorite mantle I have ever done for Christmas.  I call my design style eclectic, modern, polished casual (read more about that here), and this Christmas I am calling my décor Polished Casual Christmas.  There are lots of pictures below, so let’s get this party started!

There are three staples that have remained on this mantle since it was first hung, and I kept them here for Christmas.  One of them is the rusted piece of tin, one is the big lantern, and the other is the tall candlestick.  I love the rusted tin, but what I really want to hang above this mantle eventually is a blingy round mirror.  I am currently on the search!

I didn’t really have a vision for how I wanted this mantle to look.  I got started by laying out all of my Christmas décor that I brought down from the attic (that is how I started the entire process of Christmas decorating).  And then I just started playing with different shapes and textures and putting things up and taking them down until I saw a clear direction for how this was going.

I purchased the stockings and the stocking holders at Target last year on the day after Christmas.  LC bought me this rustic barn beam mantle for Christmas last year, and I thought the tweed and red stockings would look pretty hanging from it.  The center stocking holders is an angle, but the rest are just flat.  I like the angel, but 5 of them would have been too much.

I hung these fancy initials on each stocking.  One for each family member.  I bought these a few years ago from Kohls.

I filled my lantern with colorful ornaments (some glittered, some  not) in red, two shades of gold, green, and three different shades of blue.

This gold foil tree was also purchased at Target’s after Christmas sale.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was going on my mantle.  I think it adds the perfect touch of kitsch.

I purchased this hello deer print a couple of months ago on GroopDealz.  It came in a two pack.  I haven’t used the other print, which is different but same colors, yet.  But I will surely be hanging it somewhere and showing it off eventually.  This frame is one that I already had, and I just taped the print on the front of the glass with some gold and white striped washi tape.

I purchased this swirly, sparkly tree at Cracker Barrel around Thanksgiving.  I figured it would go on the mantle somehow, and that is just where I ended up.  I like it that both of the trees on my mantle are shiny, but in completely different yet coordinating ways.

And the little ceramic Dalmatian was the perfect black and white touch.  You can also see another way I used this Dalmatian, and read more about it in my Fall Home Tour.

And here is the final version of my mantle.  I decided to add a string of white lights.  I just laid them all across the mantle, kind of messy like.  And I have to say, the glow they give off both during the day and at night is perfect!  This mantle has been decorated since the day after Thanksgiving, and I still cannot get enough of it.

Here is a close up pictures of how I strung the lights.  I was standing on a stool when I took this picture.  But the mantle is so high that you really can’t even see the actual string of lights, just the glow they give off.  I am speaking from my own view, which is 5 ft. 6 1/2 inches tall.  I am sure LC’s view is a little different.

And lastly, I added this chalkboard art that I printed out for free last Christmas.  I looked to see if I had pinned it so I could share the link, but I was not able to find it.

After we got the mantle decorated, but before I added the lights, we took some family photos for our Christmas cards, so I thought this was an appropriate post to share them!  Enjoy!

And here is the Christmas card that I made on Shutterfly.  In case you are a tad slow, it is a joke!  We thought it would be fun to change things up from the standard family picture this year for our Christmas cards.  So we took a pic of all of us with our phones and pads.  The picture of the three kids above is on the back of the card and the captions says “We hope you can drag your selfies away from the technology for some joyful family time this Holiday Season!”  I used Pic monkey to edit this picture, and I used the “posterize” to make it look the way it does on the card.

Thanks for stopping by today to check out my Polished Casual Christmas mantle!  I have so many things I want to share on the blog before Christmas, and so little time!  EEK!

Want to see our Polished Casual Christmas Tree?  Let’s head on over there!