Christmas Window Display

As I've mentioned here previously, I volunteer at a charity shop. One of the great perks of volunteering is that I get to flex my creative fingers in putting together window displays!
Being a charity, we don't have a huge budget to play with (or any budget, really) so it's a case of being super-inventive with reams of donated stuff and scrap card/paper/etc.

Get your skates on and grab that charity bargain before someone else does!

This year in particular, I've tried to make some displays that are more visually interesting! I've intended to post about some of them for a while, so will eventually share pictues of the summer and autumn-themed windows I created.
For now, here is our Victorian Christmas-themed display!

Everything in the display is donated, with the exception of the mantelpiece, which I made from the box Mum's vacuum cleaner came in! I also made the stockings, using some scraps of fabric from my stash.

Here is a photo of the cardboard mantelpiece taken by the manager of the shop, before I adorned it with ribbons and added the fire (logs and paper leaves recycled from our autumn display). The mantelpiece and fire are attached to the bottom of a folding table donated earlier this year.

I'm not the only crafty one at the shop (there's quite a few of us!) These adorable carol-singing mice were made by another volunteer. They were made with fabric that was donated to the shop.

It's difficult to get photos of the display due to all the reflections of the outside, but here you can see the presents beneath the tree (boxes from recycling wrapped in donated paper and ribbon) and the 'present' display case (donated ribbon again).  The top shelf of the display case holds a very Ebeneezer Scrooge top hat!

And here is our much-adorned tree! Once again, the tree was donated. The majority of the decorations were also donated, with the exception of the pine cones and stick stars, which I made...

You might remember that I posted a tutorial for these pine cone decorations a few weeks ago! (They're really simple. Even people with zero crafting ability can make these!)

Here's a close-up of one of the stick stars. I used sticks originally collected for our autumn window, and some jute string left over from our summer window. Again, I'll post about these at a later date. I know I'm getting this horribly back to front, but since we're in the Christmas season, I wanted to post this one first!

So there we have it. One shop window display, and the only expenditure was the weekend I spent making the mantelpiece and fireplace. A week or so after this was taken, someone brought in a brass fender for us to borrow, and we were also lent a rather Victorian-looking Santa Claus, so this display ended up looking even better after that!

Of course, no Victorian Christmas-themed window display would be complete without a photograph of Her Majesty Queen Victoria Herself!