I’ve been imagining this vintage style Christmas tree centerpiece for weeks, and finally found time to try out the idea! You’ll love these cool trees.
Hey! It’s David from Cheltenham Road – I hope everyone is having a great holiday season.
My Etsy shop goes a bit berserk around the holiday, which is awesome and very satisfying. BUT it leaves very little time for other holiday themed projects.
I’ve been imagining these dimensional Christmas trees for weeks and finally found a little time to try out the idea.
DIY Christmas Centerpiece
To make each Christmas centerpiece I used:
- “Craft Sticks” from Home Depot measuring 1/2″ thick by 2″ wide ($1.77 for 36″ in the lumber department)
- Scans of vintage Christmas paper and boxes
- Matte Mod Podge
- White paint
- Saw
- Glue
- Sandpaper
- Scissors
- Hand saw or chop saw
- Protective eyewear
Lay out
I laid out all the wood slats and drew basic triangles on them for the trees:
I then cut each slat to length:
(you can do this with a regular hand saw as pictured but a chop saw makes faster work of it – just be careful with the smaller “tops” of the trees – you’ll want to go back to the handsaw for those for safety sake).
I cut the wrapping paper scans down into strips:
and Mod Podged them into place on both sides of the slats. After they had thoroughly dried I trimmed away any excess paper and painted the edges of the slats white.
I wanted a slightly distressed look so I sanded a bit of the edges down. And that was about it!
Next it was just a process of gluing the pieces together with hot glue.
I like that they are dimensional and two sided so you can put them in the middle of the table!
I also tried one where I left it flat but reversed each slat for a kind of vintage paper collage look.
Have a great Holiday everyone! Thank you so much for all your comments on my projects and trips over to my blog and Etsy shop. I wish you all the very best for the new year!
Tips and Further Thoughts on this Project:
- I used scans of vintage paper but you could use anything – wrapping paper, Christmas napkins, scrapbook paper, etc.
- I did find they needed a little base to keep them super stable – I just glued the bottom to some scrap wood and covered it with snow
- If you’re not into sawing and power tools, you could do the same thing with popsicle sticks or balsa wood and a sharp craft knife.
- I decided (after I was done of course) that I liked the paper that used designs or patterns a bit more than the ones that had Santa faces. There is something a bit “unchristmassy” about cutting St. Nick’s face in half!
If you like this Christmas tree centerpiece, I’d love for to you check out these other holiday craft ideas:
gordana
Thursday 18th of December 2014
Simple a very nice