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Starting from the second half of December, in private homes and office buildings, the working mood is slowly changing to the pre-holiday mood. Everyone is starting to actively prepare for the meeting with Santa Claus, and what kind of New Year without bright illuminations and colorful decorations? What is to decorate the forest beauties, so that they would certainly be noticed by the handsome bearded old man and not forget to hide the gifts under the branches? We offer a small overview of Christmas tree garlands, which can decorate not only the tree, but also the room itself.
Green Garland - a budget version of a Christmas tree for an apartment
If there is no place for a real Christmas tree in a house, but you still want to breathe in the New Year's forest scent, you can decorate the room with a garland of pine or Christmas tree branches. By the way, such living decorations look beautiful not only in the house, but also outside it, for example, near the front door, besides the branches are much cheaper than the tree itself, especially on the eve of the holiday.
To make a Christmas tree garland of branches, you will actually need the branches of a pine or spruce. They can be fastened with wire to a corrugated pipe that bends well, making it easy to turn the garland into a wreath or give it another shape.
For the decoration of a lively garland between the branches, cones, toys and snowflakes also cling, and the garland itself is wrapped in a shiny “rain” or colored ribbon.
LED garland - unique lighting for the Christmas tree, at home and not only
In the times of our mothers and grandmothers, Christmas trees were decorated with garlands consisting of incandescent bulbs. It's good that science does not stand still and these unsafe decorations today can be found only in boxes with unnecessary things in the attic. In the event of a burnout of one of the lamps, the entire garland failed and put at least a festive mood in jeopardy. If there were no spare bulbs at home, I had to throw the Olivier cut and immediately run to the store to find it. And to find a garland on December 31, you see, it is very problematic even now.
In addition, incandescent lamps emit a lot of heat, as a result of which they could melt the ceiling lamps, but also Christmas decorations. Often there were cases of fire and the tree itself. Fortunately, today such problems can be forgotten - economical and safe LED bulbs have come to replace incandescent bulbs. 
Among the advantages of LED Christmas lights is worth noting the fact that they:
- consume little electricity;
- emit little heat, and therefore do not heat up;
- failure of one lamp or even a whole link of the garland does not affect its work - the rest continue to glow.
An equally important point is the fact that most of these modern garlands have several modes of operation, which allows you to make your Christmas tree unique. This may be a uniform shine or glare, colored lamps or monophonic garlands( blue, white, purple and others).
Decorate and illuminate the area with an
Christmas tree garland Despite the wide selection of LED garlands, the old methods are also used to decorate Christmas trees on the square. Particularly relevant are whole clusters of incandescent lamps, which are hung along the streets on special cables. Such illumination can be used not only on the eve of New Year holidays, but also for evening street lighting. 
When using street Christmas lights, you must ensure that they have a solid mount and the required degree of protection( at least IP44).
Separately, it is worth mentioning the novelty of the New Year street illumination called “Snowfall”( “Falling Snow”).
Externally, it is a transparent cord with long icicle tubes hanging on it. The LEDs in the "icicles" light up one by one, moving the snowflake spot along the tube from top to bottom, so that this original LED Christmas tree garland really looks like falling snow or rain.
How to choose a network garland?
When buying a luminous decoration for a Christmas tree, a room, or a street space, the following factors should be taken into account:
- For the street, you only need to take street lights, while for the room you can use simpler and cheaper interior illumination.
- The total length of the garland, so as not to have to use several pieces and a large number of adapters and extension cords.
- The number of light bulbs and the distance between them.
- color range.
- Availability of programs for switching to different modes( blinking, smoothly changing colors, alternately used several shades).
- Reasonably high degree of protection.
- Type of plug.
- Power consumption from the network.
Some Christmas tree garlands also have additional fasteners( pins, clamps), with which they can be firmly attached to a tree or other structures.
Holiday, which is always with you
If you celebrate the New Year at home, it is quite clear that the preparation and decoration of the room is started in advance: the Christmas tree is placed closer to the outlet, so that there is a place to turn on the garlands, and they are hung around the house, focusing on the further possibilitynetwork connectivity.
But what to do if at the last moment the holiday is transferred, for example, to nature? There is no electricity in the forest, and if you wish to decorate a Christmas tree growing near the house, you should always consider whether the length of the cord to the nearest power source is enough. Christmas-tree garland on batteries is just the perfect choice for such situations. Beautiful LED light does not depend on the network and works from ordinary finger-type batteries. The only flaw in such illumination is perhaps one: the absence of flickering and the ability to change the mode( the garland works in one mode).
By purchasing such an ornament, it is worthwhile to capture a couple of sets of spare batteries, because when they sit down, the light becomes dim.
How to make a garland yourself?
Surely we all still remember how, in their distant school years, on the eve of the New Year party, the whole family cut out and pasted garlands on the school tree. Each student had to pass a certain footage of a chain of rings or folding snowflakes, which were then hooked onto a tree or used to decorate a festive hall. What to speak about simple snowflakes - they also had to be cut a lot.
Even nowadays they often make Christmas tree garlands, attracting children to this activity. What could be nicer than sharing a lesson with your parents? There are a lot of variants of such handicrafts, from simple paper garlands, which children can do, to more complex models, which can not be dispensed with without the help of my mother.
You can make such colored paper garlands from simple and uncomplicated decorations for the Christmas tree and the house:
- A chain of rings. Chain links are glued from thin strips, connecting them together.
- Heart chain. Hearts are folded from two strips, simultaneously fixing them together with clips.
- From the stripes. The cut strips are laid out parallel to each other and stitched in the center with a connecting line.
- Simple snowflake garlands. Both white and multi-colored snowflakes strung on a string look very nice.
- Bulk garlands of origami figures. Various figures( Christmas trees, snowflakes, animals, stars) are interconnected by a common rope or suspended separately.
By the way, small figures can be put on the bulbs of an ordinary LED garland. 
If after the decoration of the New Year tree there are unused toys, especially balls, they can be used to make a very spectacular Christmas tree garland of balls. To do this, the balls are worn on a thin wire or strung on a long satin ribbon, firmly fixing them. This lush garland will decorate the room.
If there is a bit of extra time in the pre-holiday rush, you can still start making an air and lace garland of balloons. For this you will need:
- string or other thick thread;
- small inflatable balls;
- PVA glue.
First, inflate the balls to the desired size. Then they are wrapped with a rope or thread, interlacing it at the discretion of their imagination and forming a beautiful pattern. It is not necessary to impose a strong tight - the ball should turn out to be openwork, with gaps. The finished workpiece is well dipped into the glue. When it dries, the ball is punched and pulled out.
To give the balls a fabulous look, you can add shine to the glue.
Balloons thus obtained are collected in a garland or hung individually on a Christmas tree. You can also wear them on a ready-made garland.
There are many more ways of making Christmas tree garlands, they are all beautiful in their own way, and choosing the best ones is quite difficult. It all depends on creative inspiration.
In the process of decorating a house and a Christmas tree, the mood automatically becomes festive. Each of us somewhere in the depths of the soul wakes up the feeling, come from a distant childhood, when you still believe in miracles, and wait for the fulfillment of your innermost desires. And no matter what decorations and garlands hang on the Christmas tree, shop or made independently, the main thing is to believe that all the good will come true, and the bad will remain in the outgoing year and will never again disturb. Happy New Year to all!
