Trees, Trees, Trees

I’m feelin a little behind.  I mean, in reality it’s December 8th, there’s still 17 days until Christmas, and it’s fine.  But stores are sold out of Christmas things and not restocking, Etsy is promoting winter things, not Christmas, consignment stores are having sales to get rid of their Christmas things, and I’m finally starting to decorate.  I still haven’t put up my tree either, but that’s because I need a hand saw to cut down the truck an inch or two.

Anyway, the other day I sent a couple pictures of mini trees I’d found via Pinterest to one of my friends asking which ones she liked best and which one I should make.  She replied with ALL OF THEM!!!!!!! as did the the other two people I asked.

Well….I didn’t make all of them.  I made other ones instead of some of the ones I sent originally because I didn’t have the supplies and didn’t feel like spending money.  I made 6 different kinds!

Because of that fact you get to see three today and I’ll post the other three tomorrow.  I’ve got dinner in the oven.

Isn’t it cute?

I hate it. This is my least favorite tree.

I started by making a template for the leaves/petals of it.  They looked like frog feet or strawberries when I cut them by hand.  Unless you have a die cut machine or a paper punch in the shape of a petal, i would NOT suggest this one.

After cutting the petals I flipped them a bit by wrapping them around a pen.

Then glued them onto the Styrofoam cone.  It’s tiny – I used it for the turkeys beak and these things come in a pack of six. I had two different sized petals so I used the big ones first and the small ones on the top.

I glued a little triangle on the top. The end.

Tree Two is easier.  The Hubby asked if it got cold and put on a sweater.  Now all the other trees will make fun of it.  ((For some reason his Christmas Tree voice is Hispanic….))

This one I actually made out of cardstock, so it cost 59 cents instead of 4.99 like the Styrofoam ones that are the same size.  Start by hot gluing the yarn around the base of the tree form.

and wrap the whole thing.  My yarn kept sliding about and separating  even with hot glue every third line or so.

So once I got to the top I rewrapped it on the way down :0)

Tada! I was thinking about putting a puff ball or a star or something on top, but I ended up just snipping off that tiny green piece and you can’t even tell.

Tree Three!!!
My favorite tree!
The Fringe Tree or the Book Tree. Either way, it’s cute, it’s me, and it’s not either of my Christmas colours but OH WELL.

It’s currently sitting on a candlestick so you can see all of the fringe.

For this one I made the base out of an empty Coors Light case.  You can also use a tampon box, cereal box, any cake/brownie/pancake mix box, beer case, or thin cardboard.  I kept the flap there and used that to glue it into a cone shape, then trimmed the bottom so it stood flat.

I took a strip of a book page, about an inch wide, and glued it to the very bottom of my base just in case – it’s good that I did since there is one piece of fringe missing – did you notice it in the picture of the finished tree?

These are 1 1/2 – 2 inch long pieces about 3/4″ wide.  You can make them as big or as long as you want, but with the size of the tree I made ((5 inches tall)) I found that shorter pieces worked better than long ((they lay nicer around the tree)) once I got about half way up.

I cut slits a little more than half way up the paper and rolled it around a pen.

Glued on the fringe….

I used an hourglass shaped piece for the top, glued in on one side, folded it down and glued it around the other as smoothly as I could make it.

Tada!! A cute book fringe tree!

 

Please ignore the random cords everywhere that show in those pictures.  The old owners of the house wired everything thru the floors and left the cords coming out of the wall with no covers, or shooting up randomly from the middle of the carpet, or coming out of the floor/wall next to the air vents.  There are internet cords, speaker cords, cable cords, and some weird looking green ones that the internet dude, electrician or The Hubby couldn’t figure out what they were.  I’m still trying to figure out what to do with them.

SO!
What do you think?
Do you like the trees?
Are you thinking about trying any of them?
Send me a picture if you do!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08 Dec This entry was published on December 8, 2012 at 8:31 pm. It’s filed under Holidays, Tutorial and tagged book, book pages, Christmas, christmas trees, decorations, DIY, fringe tree, holidays, home decor, mini trees, paper, tutorial, yarn tree. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.