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New Traditional
Floral designer Jil Schlisner put together a fresh take on traditional holiday decor for this home’s bold double doors. And to her, that meant one thing: pinecones. “I have always loved pinecones for that quintessential Christmas feel. What’s nice, though, is that they can go in many directions—even modern.” In particular, she suggests larger sugar pinecones, which are clustered into a small wreath here (but would also look excellent piled high in your empty outdoor pots, Schlisner says).
Design Tip: For your wreath this year, ditch tired red velvet ribbon and follow Schlisner’s lead: “I love mixing different types of ribbon and weaving them through the wreaths with wire,” she says. Traditional reds, greens, and golds feel grown-up with this out-of-the-box treatment.
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Get the Look: Flat cedar branches get dressed up with red Aronia berries, snowberry, sugar pinecones, birch branches, a few rooster feathers, and a single silver ornament. The natural gold color of the magnolia tips infuses the arrangement with warmth.
Winter Solstice
“The winter solstice speaks to the mythical side of nature,” says Schlisner, who used the seasonal celebration as a guide for this earthy design. “The air plants, burning sage, and cypress evergreen read wintery, but they are somewhat unexpected because of their silvery blue tones.” Crystals and mica (a shiny mineral) provide a more natural take on the reflections and sparkle you’d get from classic ornaments.
Design Tip: A simple (and on-trend) air plant is the focal point of this door’s stylish arrangement. But for asymmetry—and a visual surprise—Schlisner added another, smaller air plant lower on the arrangement. She commonly employs this concept in her designs and even has a name for it: the “little satellite.”
Get the Look: Banksia flowers, seeded eucalyptus (sprayed gold), cedar branches, and stemmed seedpods hang around the deer antlers on this minimal wreath. A single gold ribbon and a few simple black ornaments serve as clean, modern alternatives to glittery holiday baubles.
Organic Modern
This entry’s tall, narrow window was Schlisner’s starting point. She attached a birch-tree-patterned ribbon to the door to mimic the verticality of the windows and give the door the look of a wrapped gift. Deer antlers in the wreath—a nod to Colorado’s natural beauty—gives her overall design a decidedly neutral tone. “Nature contributes similar themes from different parts of itself,” she says. “The ivory of the antlers and the ivory of the Banksia blooms—seeing those natural color tones repeat is very exciting to me.”
Design Tip: “My biggest tip for modern design is to follow lines and keep it simplistic,” Schlisner says. Here, that meant taking cues from the vertical lines of the door and playing off the antler-driven neutral color theme.
Get the Look: Banksia flowers, seeded eucalyptus (sprayed gold), cedar branches, and stemmed seedpods hang around the deer antlers on this minimal wreath. A single gold ribbon and a few simple black ornaments serve as clean, modern alternatives to glittery holiday baubles.
