A Trio of Trees

Can you believe that Christmas is

a week away?

How is that possible?

I still have a ton of things

to do yet!

The hustle and bustle of the holiday

season usually brings on the stress levels.

Whenever I feel my stress levels starting

to take over my emotions, that's when

I know that it's time to step away

from everything and create a craft.

Crafting is my go to de-stressor.

I've seen these little birch bark trees

popping up all over blogland and loved

them instantly.  I went looking for them

in the stores and couldn't find any.

So I put on my thinking cap and created my own version.

I made mine from poster board and cardstock.

I placed one by our Nativity...

and two on top of our Secretary in the kitchen.

Costs to make these. $0.

Here's how I made them.

Using poster board I first create a few cone shapes.

You can easily use store bought cones to make these.

Next, I created a shape for the boughs of the tree

and traced them onto kraft colored cardstock

and cut out the shapes.

I wasn't worried about getting the ends perfectly rounded.

If you don't have cardstock, old cereal boxes would work great.

My largest tree measure 12 inches tall.

I used 5 sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" cardstock for the 12" tree.

Once your boughs are cut out it's time to apply them onto

the cone shape.  Using a hot glue gun,run a line of hot

glue at the straight end of the bough and place it onto

the base of the cone shape. I left about a 1/2" overhang.

Continue applying the boughs around the entire base

of the cone shape, overlapping the boughs as you go. 

Once you have your first row complete it should look like this.

Continue adding rows until you have completely covered

the entire cone shape, overlapping and staggering each row as you go.

When completed your tree should look like this.

The trees looked a little plain as they were,

so using an artist brush and some white craft

paint I roughly painted on some snow.

While the tree was still wet, I lifted each of the

boughs with my fingers to curl the ends and give

the tree some dimension.

I loved them so much I ended up make a set for our Sonny.

And the best part about making these trees,

other than the fact they cost me 0 dollars to make....

It alleviated my stress level!

And that makes me very happy!

That's it for this week.

From Our home to Yours,

have a Very Merry Christmas!

Veronica