Winter Backgrounds and Sky Backdrops

Christmas Village Displays

There is no denying that purchasing backgrounds can be an expensive business, depending upon the size of your Christmas village.

There is also the problem of finding a suitable image, since there only ever seems to be a relatively limited choice of winter pictures available, although anything is preferable to a backdrop provided by patterned wallpaper or a brightly coloured wall.

Most of the skies sold for this purpose tend to be fairly bright and depict a daytime scene, with clouds and trees. Consider making something yourself, painted a little darker to create the illusion that dusk has just arrived and night-time is around the corner. This is the ideal colour if you have illuminated houses and street lights galore.

Purchasing and Printing

There are certainly a growing number of winter backgrounds available for purchase, both online and in stores, suitable for a winter village. However, if your layout is fairly long, you may need to join these pictures together and it makes a lot of sense to disguise the join behind a building or tall tree if possible, so as not to spoil the seamless illusion of a winter sky.

If you know your way around a computer, then you will be able to find many suitable pictures on the Internet that could be printed out to create a repeating theme. Try searching for 'snowy wallpaper', 'winter scenery', 'mountain background' or 'Christmas sky'.

When trying to join printed images of a mountain together, if you flip one over using a simple computer graphics editor, to create a mirrored effect (rotate canvas / flip canvas horizontally), it will naturally join up exactly. This can be repeated as necessary to create a long length, suitable for a windowsill or shelf. Any joins that are particularly obvious can be covered up by printing out single snow-covered spruce trees and sticking them over the joins, to make the pictures merge together more successfully.

If you are lucky enough to have enjoyed a skiing holiday in the Alps or another winter wonderland, or have even visited Santa Claus himself in Lapland, then you may perhaps have your very own personal photograph of wintertime scenery. This could be printed out as a poster or two quite cheaply, via an online digital photography website or local camera store.


Picture showing how the same photograph of a mountain can be used twice (one inverted as a mirror image) to create a simplistic repeating winter background:



Photos of official Christmas village backgrounds, supplied by Lemax and My Village: