Victorian Beaded Christmas Ornaments

The Victorians loved to decorate their Christmas trees and used beaded Christmas ornaments, crocheted Christmas ornaments, tassels and gilded nuts to create an opulent feature for their Christmas celebrations.

Within Victorian society times were prosperous, Britain still had an empire and, quite frankly, the Victorians like to show off!   Creating spectacular Christmas trees were another way to show their social standing in the community, whether they were members of the landed gentry or the nouveau riche.

Victorian ladies didn’t go to work instead they entertained and amused themselves in their homes.   This meant that activities such as needlepoint or beading were enjoyed by a number of them and this led to some beautiful handmade Victorian Christmas ornaments being created.  

You can still make your own beaded Christmas ornaments if you’d like to, but the great thing about living in this millennium is that you can buy a number of Victorian inspired beaded Christmas ornaments online for your own tree.  

Personally, although I love beading I'm a little more time poor than the ladies of the Victorian era.   This means that buying my Christmas ornaments is a much better idea for me and there are some fantastic beaded Christmas ornaments available, especially online.

When you’re looking for beaded ornaments to put on a Victorian inspired Christmas tree you can go a couple of different ways.   You could use ornaments that are merely sequined and beaded Christmas ball ornaments that would look great on both a modern or a Victorian tree or you can use ornaments that have a more ‘Victorian’ feel to them.   Personally I think a mix of the two is a great way to go.

The Victorian’s loved rich colors like purple, burgundy, red, blue, basically the colors of gemstones, they also liked the opulence of gold while cream was another color that was embraced in their décor (with accented gem like colors of course).   Combining these colors with beadwork on a Christmas ornament is definitely the way to create a Victorian styled Christmas tree.

Tassels were another decorative piece that the Victorians liked to incorporate into their homes – think of the tassel tie-backs for curtains as an example.   Combining tassels onto the Christmas tree can be easily adapted with some beaded ornaments as you can see below.

Christmas balls with crystal drops are very Victorian inspired and look awesome on any Christmas tree, I've only featured green and silver ornaments here, but the same principle would work with other colors as well.