Portsmouth mum glams up Copnor home with 'natural' and 'classy' sea theme for Christmas that cost her 'next to nothing'

Tilly Beresford, 37, used every trick in the book to create a sea theme to dazzle her family and friends over the festive period. Better yet, it was all done without expensive equipment. Ms Beresford used accessible items to glam up her home in Queens Road, Copnor.

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The former builders apprentice told The News: ‘Christmas decorations are extortionate and I just think anything in nature is prettier, and reclaimed things usually look a bit more expensive and classier.

‘Last year, I did over the top, really garish Christmas and it made sick, it hurt my eyes so much, as there was too much colour and too much going on.

‘This year, I wanted it to be natural and cost me next to nothing. I want to spend more money on the food, not the decorations.’

Ms Beresford said she and her two children – Rigby, seven and Marla, 10 – decided on the theme together because ‘we’re from Portsmouth, we’re sea people.’ The family will be having a seafood menu to match.

‘I wanted to keep it very natural and simple this year,’ she added, ‘I didn’t want to go majorly over the top - even though I am going to build some sort of grotto in my garden and stick Santa in it, that might be over the top.’

The avid interior designer has revamped her house over eight times in the last decade. Brass horse shoe buckles with animals adorn the dining table alongside shells picked by the children from the beach, hessian which ‘costs pennies’ running through middle, plenty of blues and greens, ‘treasures’ and clay pipes from the beach near the Spinnaker Tower.

Wreaths have been made from shells and branches. A 1940s fishing net drapes the front door. The Christmas tree in the kitchen is decorated with hanging scallop shells, an old crystal chandelier found in someone’s front garden and lights.

Ms Beresford also plans to spray paint – a ‘godsend’ technique – bouncy balls in silver and gold to use them as baubles. ‘You can literally use anything,’ she added. ‘People forget to open their eyes.

‘When I go to expensive shops which sell Christmas decorations, sometimes they use what I’m using, and I got it for a lot less.

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‘People are selling massive baubles for stupid money, when you could turn bouncy balls into them by painting them.’

Ms Beresford advises people to scour through second-hand and antique shops for ornaments to suit a theme, picking up thing from nature such as branches and eucalyptus, to use unwanted items left outside houses and to use forgotten ornaments from around the house.

She said: ‘I know people want the proper thing, but if you’re doing it on a budget, then you can create anything from something which is cheap to begin with and use a little bit of magic.

‘It’ll take more effort, but you get so much more out of it. It’s such as nice feeling when you’ve put something up, it looks pretty, and it’s free. Upcycling is a beautiful thing to do in an age where we’re using and chucking away like it’s nothing.’