History

About Us

It’s important to us that you feel comfortable buying from Festive Frames.

We offer a new and genuinely ground‑breaking product, so there’s a good chance you may not have heard of us before today. That will change over time — but for now, we understand that trust matters.

Festive Frames was invented by Lee and Susan Markham, and the story of how it evolved can be read below. We are very much a UK cottage‑industry business, based in the small rural town of Market Drayton in Shropshire. All of the products you purchase are stocked, packed, and dispatched from Shropshire, typically within 24–48 hours of receiving your order.

Our lighting is supplied by two of the UK’s largest and most respected festive lighting manufacturers: Noma and Premier Decorations.

Our frame components are manufactured to our own designs, using bespoke moulds, at carefully selected factories in Asia.

All payments are securely processed by trusted third‑party providers including Shopify, PayPal, and Klarna. This means you can pay using your credit or debit card, PayPal balance, or Klarna, knowing your details are fully protected. We never see or store any of your financial information.

Contact details:

Email: info@festiveframes.co.uk Phone: 07486 043044

Our Story

The inspiration behind Festive Frames began in 2013.

It came from a simple observation: the huge difference between expensive commercial festive lighting displays and the much more basic domestic versions. At their core, both use the same thing — a string of lights. On their own, lights are just that: a bundle of bulbs on a wire.

What makes them come alive is what they’re attached to.

We see this every year with Christmas trees. A pile of lights on the floor looks unremarkable, but once those same lights are wrapped around a tree, they are transformed. It became clear that it wasn’t the lights themselves that created the impact — it was the structure supporting them.

This highlighted the real difference between commercial and domestic festive displays. Commercial displays are designed around their environment, while domestic displays are often a collection of items pulled out of the shed year after year, limited by what we already own.

Storage was the next major challenge.

Large, impressive displays require space — not just when they’re on show, but for the other eleven months of the year. Even then, a spectacular 13‑foot Cinderella carriage may wow an audience once, but it loses its impact if it’s brought out unchanged every year. Most of us reuse the same decorations simply because they were expensive to buy and we want to get maximum value from them.

From this, three clear goals emerged:

1. Create a framework that brings string lights to life

2. Make it possible to build very large sculptures that can be stored in a small space — even under a bed

3. Allow displays to be changed and reinvented year after year

In 2013, we set about finding a solution.

Our first experiments involved using the natural shape of our own property as a framework, dressing it with strings of lights. The image below from 2015 shows how we created dramatic draped light curtains using nothing but string lights. The results were stunning — but the approach was far from practical.

The lights were under constant strain and rarely lasted more than a single season. There were also more than a few nerve‑wracking moments at the top of a very long ladder. As beautiful as the displays were, they simply weren’t durable, safe, or sustainable.

And that’s where the real work began.

Next, two further experiments — shown here — proved to be pivotal and taught us a great deal.

We discovered that by grouping strings of lights together, it was possible to begin forming a one‑dimensional image, as demonstrated by the Mouse character. By clustering different colours, distinct sections emerged that helped define the overall design. This was an important breakthrough, but the image still lacked clarity and precision.

The solution was to introduce line‑out lighting to define the outer edges of the shape. This added the definition the design needed and transformed it from a collection of lights into a recognisable form. This technique is explained in more detail here and is one we actively recommend when using Festive Frames.

The next logical step was to move into three‑dimensional sculptures.

This can be seen in one of our earliest experiments — a Cinderella’s carriage built using old tent poles, plumbing pipes, string lights, and cluster lights. It was an impressive display and created a real sense of scale and impact. However, once again we found ourselves pushing materials far beyond what they were designed to do.

Over time, poles began to fail and break, simply because they weren’t intended for this type of structure. Despite these limitations, the experiment was a success in one crucial way: it proved the concept. The seed had been sown, and we continued refining and developing the ideas that would eventually become Festive Frames.

By 2016, we had moved to an Arctic theme, and this marked our first attempt at creating a Polar Bear.

The display took the local area by storm and raised a significant amount of money for charity. It was built using an extraordinary mix of materials — chicken wire, tent poles, plumbing pipe, hydraulic tubing, countless cable ties, and just about anything else we could make work. It required an enormous amount of effort and was certainly not an easy build. Chicken wire, in particular, proved to be a nightmare to work with — but once again, the seed had been sown.

In the years that followed, there were countless trials with different materials. Hours were spent designing connectors and poles that offered maximum versatility, followed by testing, refining, and starting again. We returned to the challenge year after year, gradually improving and learning, until we finally arrived at what is now Festive Frames.

We will continue to develop and refine the system, but it has now reached a stage where we are proud to share it with the world. You’ll notice that the Cinderella’s Coach and Polar Bear designs remain especially close to our hearts — and it’s no coincidence that they were among the very first designs added to the Festive Frames portfolio.