Combine my love of Christmas, with my love of crafts, with my new found love of Pinterest, and the result is this. A whole bunch of DIY Christmas trees. If I lived alone, my house would be decoupaged from top to bottom. But, since I have a husband and two kids that need to share the space with me, I suppress my desire to glue gun everything. Suppress, that is, until Christmas. Come Christmas, the house belongs to me. Me and my little bit of heaven on Earth, Michael's Craft Store.
For this first Christmas tree, you'll need a Styrofoam Christmas tree, mint leaf gummies, and straight pins. It's best to go with the green Styrofoam Christmas tree since some will show through, and look for the straight pins with the multi-coloured ends, since they will act as the Christmas decorations on the tree.
Starting at the bottom, pin each mint leaf gummy onto the Christmas tree. That's about it. I was watching The Blacklist with my husband while making this, and I have to say, the hardest part about this project was trying to get him to stop eating my craft supplies.
When your tree is done, look through your Christmas decorations for something that can act as a topper. It can be anything you like. Or nothing at all. It's your tree. It looks good enough to eat, don't you think? But, I wouldn't eat it. Unless you like eating little bits of Styrofoam.
This next tree is just as quick and easy as the last one. You can put the kids down for a nap, make a tree, and still have time to do the laundry before they wake up. That's my kind of craft project. For this tree, you'll need a Styrofoam tree, a glue gun and fuzzy ribbon. I don't know the actual name, but it's in the ribbon section of Michael's, so you can't miss it. Oh, and a cup of tea. The tea is important.
Starting at the top, wrap the fuzzy ribbon around the Christmas tree. You'll want to glue the entire first row, to ensure it will stay in place. As you wrap the fuzzy wired ribbon down the tree you'll only need to glue sporadically. Ok...I have to confess something. This final design was not my original intention for this project. I ran out of fuzzy wired ribbon. But, me being me, I couldn't wait until I was next able to go to Michael's to buy some more, so I decided to rummage through my Christmas decorations to find something to glue to the base to hide the Styrofoam tree. So, you can either buy enough material, or, plan to hid the bottom.
Before we had kids, my friend Vanessa and I owned a gift basket company. We were perfect basket business partners because we both like tedious activities. Need me to add a gift tag to 200 favours? No problem. Want a tiny crystal glued on each gift tag? Even better. If you can relate to this, then this next tree is for you. For this tree you'll need a couple bags of mixed buttons, and some straight pins with coloured ends, and, of course, a Styrofoam tree. Oh, and a glue gun. First, separate the buttons into two bowls, one with large buttons and one with small buttons. Tedious task #1.
Start by gluing the large buttons all over the tree. Don't worry if some white shows through, you'll be covering that up later. Tedious task #2. Once that is done, using the straight pins, pin the smaller buttons onto the tree to cover up the white spots. Overlap the large buttons with the smaller buttons as well, for a fuller look. Tedious task #3.
And voila. The most adorable, tedious button tree ever.
Ok, back to the easy trees. These next three trees are all completed the same way. You'll need, can you guess? A Styrofoam tree, a glue gun, and this time some yarn and some twine. And any straight pins you have left over. Just wrap the trees with the yarn or the twine, gluing as you go. For the yarn trees, you really don't need too much glue. But you will need to wrap the yarn around the tree in a couple of layers. The twine will only require one layer. Then top with whatever decoration you found in your basement.
For the twine tree, take any leftover straight pins and pin them all over the tree to act as adorable little ornaments.
So, now, what to do with all these DIY Christmas trees? Make a DIY Christmas tree forest, of course! Add some garland to amp up the forest feel and your Christmas tree forest is complete. Alright, this was supposed to be a blog post about trees, but, since you asked, I'll tell you how I added those red ornaments to my photos.
Using a piece of twine, tie a loop at the top and tie an ornament at the bottom. Hang the ornament on the nail used to hang the picture, then hang the picture back on the nail.
Next, tie a piece of twine around the frame, off to one side. The nail in the back will stop the twine from sliding down the frame. Then, on each end of the tied twine, tie an ornament. Easy peasy!
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