Celebrating Over 100 Years of Christmas Lights

Can you imagine celebrating the holiday season without Christmas lights? In North America, it is expected that festive strings will illuminate trees, homes, and city centers throughout the month of December. But the Christmas lights we have today have been a long time coming. Its evolution began in 18^th century Germany and continues to progress each year.

Candles in Germany

It is said that Christmas trees were reserved for wealthy citizens of Germany in the 1700s. Those with exorbitant amounts of money would lavish their trees with candles – an expensive and hazardous decoration.

Thomas Edison and his String of Lights

Some time after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he strung together a series of electric lights. In 1880, during the holiday season, he hung the strand outside his laboratory near a railroad line. Those traveling by train could see the first illuminated Christmas display.

Edward Johnson Introduces Colored Lights

Shortly after Edison began stringing lights together, a partner of his, Edward H. Johnson, wound a strand around his Christmas tree. He also colored the electric bulbs red, white, and blue.

General Electric Brings Lights to the People

Still, Christmas lights were reserved for wealthy families. It is estimated that lighting a Christmas tree in 1903 would have “cost $2000 in today’s dollars”. This prompted General Electric to offer Christmas light kits that contained strings of colorful lights.

Christmas Aglow for Everyone

In 1917, making Christmas lights common and accessible was a priority for the Sadacca family. They owned a novelty lighting company and began offering colorful stands of Christmas lights at their store. They became known as NOMA Electric Co., a popular name in Christmas lights that dominated the market for over four decades.

Today’s Christmas Lights

Today, Christmas Lights come in all shapes and sizes. People in North America, and throughout the world, choose to don their homes with festive lights. Now a days, it seems the holiday season officially begins when houses are aglow. Millions of Americans celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza and other holidays with creative lighting. They take holiday decorations to a new level, becoming inventive with one of the world’s greatest inventions.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Art and Atmosphere:

Norman Rockwell’s Artwork Inspired by the Christmas Holiday

The Stories Behind Holiday Colors

Christmas Time

Be a Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)

Segmation

FREE Newsletter

Join us on FacebookSegPlay® Mobile iTunes now available for iPhone and iPad

www.segmation.com

How is your Halloween Spirit?

http://www.segmation.com

As fallen leaves carpet the ground with brilliant shades of brown, yellow, red and orange, a variety of strange and spooky images start to appear creating Halloween Spirit. Ghosts and ghouls hang from trees, carved pumpkins and gnarled broomsticks appear on doorsteps, spiders weave webs across windows and gravestones turn up on front lawns.

Halloween art sets the stage for the scariest and fun holiday of the year.

http://www.segmation.com

The most common images in Halloween art include:

• ghosts and haunted houses
• witches, broomsticks and cauldrons
• pumpkins and jack o’lanterns
• spiders and cobwebs
• monsters
• werewolves
• vampires and bats
• skulls and skeletons
• gravestones

Both adults and children alike enjoy creating Halloween arts and crafts that bring these strange and macabre images to life. Here are some hands-on ideas for Halloween arts and crafts:

• Color in Halloween images with markers, crayons, paint, or even digitally using your computer
• Cut outlines of spiders, bats, and witches’ hats out of black paper
• Cut out body parts from magazines and paste them on thick paper to make your own monsters
• Create your own gravestone using black marker on grey paper
• Draw a pair of eyes and a wide, smiling mouth full of teeth on a pumpkin, and carve it out to create a jack o’lantern

segmation.com

To get in the holiday spirit, hang your 2-D Halloween arts and crafts in your front windows or on your front door. Place your 3-D Halloween art projects on your doorstep or front lawn.
The most exciting form of “Halloween art” is your costume!

Whether you are a 7 years old or 77 years old, on October 31 you can transform yourself into someone (or something) else. This is where your imagination has free reign – you can change your appearance however you want by wearing a costume, a wig, and/or make-up. Whether you are the one trick-or-treating or the one answering the door with a bowl of candy, Halloween is a holiday full of surprises, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Art:

Colors Solve the “Monster Mash” Mystery

“The Pixel Painter”

Art Beneath Your Feet

Be a Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)

Colors Solve the “Monster Mash” Mystery

The “Monster Mash” caught on in a flash, but is it really a Halloween hit? Nowhere in the song does it mention Halloween buzzwords like “Trick or Treat,” “Ghosts and Goblins,” or “A witch and her broomstick.” All we know about the song is that it was a graveyard smash.

This month, Segmation is on a mission to find out if “Monster Mash” was a Halloween hit or a Frankenstein inspired tune. Was the song released in August 1962 so it could reach the top of the Billboard charts by Halloween, or was it just a coincidence?

A reason why Bobby Pickett’s song, “Monster Mash” provokes this question is because the lyrics do not mention anything about Halloween. More so, traditional Halloween colors aren’t apparent in the single’s album cover.

To explore this mystery, Segmation is using colors to solve the case.

Halloween Colors

What colors come to mind when thinking of Halloween? Orange and black, of course.

It is believed that these colors have been put in place because of what they represent. Orange is the color for autumn – leaves turn orange and seem to cast this shade throughout neighborhoods and countryside. This is most prevalent when the sun shines. If the sun is not out then skies are overcast. With summer over, dark days are approaching. Halloween black is used to represent this reality.

The History of Halloween Colors

Two historical sources also confirm that orange and black are Halloween colors.

Celtics and the Druids ­used to conduct after life ceremonies by burning orange, beeswax candles and using black cloths to cover caskets.

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice that, when applied to a living environment, brings peace and solace. According to Feng Shui, orange and black exist at opposite ends of the energy spectrum. Orange is warm and full. Black, on the other hand, is mysterious and empty.

According to tradition and history, the colors represented on the “Monster Mash” album cover do not promote Halloween at all. There are some additional colors to explore before confirming this graveyard smash was just another Billboard 100 hit.

The Other Colors of Halloween

If orange and black were the only colors of Halloween, the holiday season would seem dull. This is the day of the dead, after all. Colors that symbolize death include: red for blood, green as the eerie color of decay, purples to signify mysticism and supernatural happenings, and white to reflect life after death in ghost and mummies, as well as the full moon.

Taking the other colors of Halloween into account, it seems completely appropriate to consider “Monster Mash” a Halloween song. While not using the obvious colors of Halloween, the album cover proves that this is, in fact, a holiday tune.

Snap your fingers, get in costume, and listen to the graveyard smash. Common’ everybody – do the Monster Mash.

Happy Halloween, from Segmation.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Halloween Art:

Ideas for Creating Halloween Spirit

Ideas for Creating Halloween Art

Halloween Scenes

Be a Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)

Segmation

FREE Newsletter

Join us on FacebookSegPlay® Mobile iTunes now available for iPhone and iPad

www.segmation.com

Ideas for Creating Halloween Spirit

http://www.segmation.com

Every October, as fallen leaves carpet the ground with brilliant shades of brown, yellow, red and orange, a variety of strange and spooky images start to appear creating Halloween Spirit. Ghosts and ghouls hang from trees, carved pumpkins and gnarled broomsticks appear on doorsteps, spiders weave webs across windows and gravestones turn up on front lawns.

Halloween art sets the stage for the scariest holiday of the year. Well before October 31 rolls around, you’ll want to get busy creating the seasonal decorations that will set the tone for the entire month.

The most common images in Halloween art include:

• ghosts and haunted houses
• witches, broomsticks and cauldrons
• pumpkins and jack o’lanterns
• spiders and cobwebs
• monsters
• werewolves
• vampires and bats
• skulls and skeletons
• gravestones

Both adults and children alike enjoy creating Halloween arts and crafts that bring these strange and macabre images to life. Here are some hands-on ideas for Halloween arts and crafts:

• Color in Halloween images with markers, crayons, paint, or even digitally using your computer
• Cut outlines of spiders, bats, and witches’ hats out of black paper
• Cut out body parts from magazines and paste them on thick paper to make your own monsters
• Create your own gravestone using black marker on grey paper
• Draw a pair of eyes and a wide, smiling mouth full of teeth on a pumpkin, and carve it out to create a jack o’lantern

To get in the holiday spirit, hang your 2-D Halloween arts and crafts in your front windows or on your front door. Place your 3-D Halloween art projects on your doorstep or front lawn.
The most exciting form of “Halloween art” is your costume!

Whether you are a 7 years old or 77 years old, on October 31 you can transform yourself into someone (or something) else. This is where your imagination has free reign – you can change your appearance however you want by wearing a costume, a wig, and/or make-up. Whether you are the one trick-or-treating or the one answering the door with a bowl of candy, Halloween is a holiday full of surprises, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Art:

Art Therapy Treats more than the Heart

How to turn your Passion into Profit

Art Beneath Your Feet

Be a Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)