Cardboard Christmas Tree

Special Guest post from Shelly of CREATING CREATIVES

So this is a bit fun isn't it! I am thrilled to have Shelly from Creating Creatives contributing this post as part of Craftmas 2017. Craftmas is the brain child of the extremely crafty Laura and Tia from Little Button Diaries who had the idea to bring together crafters from all over the world in a festive kind of blog hop. Once you have made these glorious trees, head over to Oh Creative Day and then keep following the links until you get through all FIFTEEN projects and land back here! So without further adieu, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the wonderful Shelly!...

Hello Handy With Scissors fans! I was quite excited when I found out we’d be guest posting here for Craftmas, as I am in the fan club too! We have a pretty big thing in common with Susie and her gang, we love to recycle. In fact, it was a pile of cut up cereal boxes that inspired this Christmas Tree project. We hope you enjoy it and if you make one we’d love to see how it turns out! Thank you so much for having us and Merry Christmas! – Shelly

What you need:

• Cereal box

• Scissors

• Acrylic paint

• Paint brush

• Hot glue gun

• Styrofoam cone or cardstock to make your own cone

To make:

1. Choose the colours for your tree. We chose one colour per tree in 3-4 different shades

2. Open up your cereal box and paint in long strokes up and down the inside of the box. Try not to mix up the colors too much, we found having a streaky look gave the tree a really nice texture. Set aside and let the paint dry. 

3.  Once dry, measure and cut strips about 4cm apart, perpendicular to the brush strokes (see picture). This is a great exercise to work on some measuring skills.

4.  Make your cone, or use a cone you already have. We had a Styrofoam cone from an old package. If you don’t have a cone you can do the following to make one:

a.     Cut out a circle. The height of your cone is determined by the radius of your circle. The larger the radius, the taller the cone.  Our cone had a 21cm radius.

b.     Cut out a triangular wedge from your circle.

c.      Bring the sides of your circle together.

d.     Tape in place to make a cone.

Once all your triangles are cut and your cone is ready, plug in your hot glue gun, grab a hot beverage, put on some Christmas tunes and sit down to glue your triangles to your cone.

5. Glue 4 triangles to the top of the cone, and bend them in towards each other to make the top of the tree.

6.  For the next row glue the triangles in between each of the above triangles.

7. Continue gluing triangles all the way down and around the cone.

8.  Now for the star! Draw a star on some spare cardboard or even on some leftover painted cardboard like we did. Make sure to draw a little stem. Then cut it out.

9. Paint your star on both sides. We painted ours gold.10.

10. Glue your star to the top of y our tree. Put some glue on the stem of the star and insert it into the top of the tree.

Display!