It’s hard to believe, but this good old-fashioned country girl has not decorated a Christmas tree since moving to Florida 6 years ago. It’s been very hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit in the absence of snow and frigid weather. (Although, at this point, 65 feels pretty nippy to me. But that’s another story.)
This year, as I was perusing a booth at Sarasota Naturally, I noticed they were selling cardboard Christmas trees, and I had to bite. I’ve seen other cool cardboard items for sale – kid’s playhouses, furniture, lamps – and I’ve always been fascinated by them. So, it was with glee that I ordered my 3′ tall Christmas tree made of cardboard for $19.95.
It arrived in a flat cardboard box in which I can store the tree between holidays. All I had to do was punch out the cardboard tree and assemble it on the included cardboard base. Pretty simple! I also punched out all the little spaces on the tree to hang ornaments, along with a bunch of circle, star and candy cane shapes. I wasn’t sure at first what to do with all these shapes. I guess I could’ve made individual ornaments out of them, but instead I decided to make a garland for the tree. I began by painting the front and back of each shape. Then I used glitter glue to give them some sparkle. It took FOREVER to get this painting all done – between the limited space on my table and waiting for the brushes to dry after I washed them clean of each color. Then I carefully glued each piece to a long strand of green ribbon. I also painted the tree-top star and added glitter glue to that.
I then went to my local hardware store and purchased two short strands of red LED lights. I hung some of my own normal ornaments on the tree, wrapped a piece of wide ribbon around it, added the home-made garland and then added the lights. Ta-dah!
I am VERY happy with the end result. It is a worthy tree that I will enjoy for years to come – as long as I don’t get it wet or let my cat chew on it.
I was wondering what all those little green circles were going to become! Beautiful idea. I love the little cut-outs. For next year you can recycle this year’s Christmas cards and make ornaments out of them! There are several tutorials out there, including one on my blog (<a href="http://snipandsnail.blogspot.com/2008/12/recycled-christmas-last-years-christmas.html"here) from last year. Happy holidays!
Now this is recycling at its finest! A very nifty idea indeed!
Oh my