Monday, November 12, 2012

forest of handmade trees ~ part 1

I've been working on some fun trees to add to my Christmas decor this year, and today I'm going to show you the first three I made. All of these are fast and easy, and they use supplies you probably already have in your craft stash!

First, the yarn tree. This one took all of 5 minutes to do. I had this chunky off-white yard left over from a previous crochet project and was happy to have another use for it. All I did was hot glue the end of the yarn to the tip of the tree and start winding. When I got to the bottom I put glue all around the bottom edge of the cone so the yarn wouldn't fall off. 

If you don't like the slouchy look it has you could use dots of glue here and there as you wind, but I kind of like it this way. I didn't mean for it to turn out slouchy, but I think it was a happy mistake :)



I used a hollow cardboard cone for this one and I thought if you wanted it to have a trunk you could use a candlestick turned upside down.

Very cute, and it would add some height if you need it.


Second, the fabric tree. For this one I cut two circles out of fabric and pinned them to the top and bottom of the cone (I used a styrofoam cone this time so it has a flat top and bottom that I wanted to cover). I used some leftover fabric from my Christmas card pinboard.  Next I cut 2 inch strips of the same fabric, folded them in half, and started wrapping from the top down. I just used pins at the beginning and end of each strip to attach it to the cone. I didn't really keep track of how long this one took, but I would say probably about 15 minutes.


And third, the twine tree. This one is similar to the yarn tree except I used a styrofoam cone so I needed to cover the flat top. I just started wrapping the twine in a spiral to make a flat little disk that I glued to the top of the cone. Then I just kept wrapping all the way down and used glue around the bottom of the cone to hold the twine in place. This one took about 10 minutes to make.

You can see a little bit better how I covered the top in this picture.

In about half an hour I had the beginning of my own little forest that I can't wait to see all put together with the rest of my rustic Christmas decor!

Check back soon to see the rest of the forest!

Linked to

1 comment:

Chelsea @ Making Home Base said...

So cute! I love the yarn tree - the "slouchy" look is great!