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It’s almost the most wonderful time of year. I like to think everyday we get is a gift and can be the most wonderful time of year, but Christmas is special.
I love the lights, color, spirit, meaning and joy that it brings.
As we wait for a house, I have been busily getting back into crafting. I started with Christmas projects of course!
Today, I am excited to share with you my rustic trees. I started with getting some basic supplies together. You might have some of these things already on hand.
- white poster board
- hot glue gun
- jute string
- scissors
- small wood circle (I bought mine for $0.97 at Wal-mart), but you can also find it here
- burlap
- any decorative fringe (I used embroidery floss and pom-poms)
Start by wrapping your poster board into a mega phone shape. Depending on how tight you wrap your poster board will depict how tall your tree will be. You can see from my picture, I wrapped them differently, so I would get two different height trees. I then used a little hot glue to hold my mega phone shape intact.
I then dropped my wood circle inside the mega phone to where it got snug and it stopped going down. This is where the base of the tree should be. I cut all the poster board off that was higher than the wood circle.
Next, I hot glued the wood circle in place. This created an inexpensively made tree form. From here, you can use your imagination and decorate that tree any way you want! I will show you a wrapping idea that I used.
I started by hot gluing some jute string to the base of my tree. This also made the seem from poster board to the wood circle pretty and clean. I then simply added a little glue, pressed my string into it and started wrapping and continued to add glue and string as I went up and around my tree form.
To be completely honest, the jute string took a while. It was mindless. No thinking was required, but it got a little tedious. That is why on my second tree form I did the same technique but wrapped and twisted burlap. It was so much quicker. Ultimately, I am glad I did the jute string on one of my tree forms. I love the look of the string tree with the burlap tree. They are both rustic materials, but different mediums that created its own look.
To help the jute string not look quite like a cat scratch-er, I strung some pom poms on embroidery floss and wrapped it around my tree. I love how this added a pop of color, but the tree still holds a simple look.
What do you think!? Do you like the rustic look too and want to incorporate it for Christmas? You can use your imagination once you have your tree base and embellish your tree form any way you like!! I think glitter would be beautiful or gluing pom poms or feathers all over would be stunning as well! There are lots of possibilities!
This idea is an inexpensive way to get some heightened decorative trees. These would be cute by a fireplace or on an end table.
Where would you use them?
I don’t usually share Christmas before Thanksgiving, but with moving I think Christmas will come and go so quickly and I don’t want to miss it. If you like this tree idea, you might also like my burlap wreath. It’s another simple craft!
Turn on a fun movie, get some hot chocolate, coffee, or tea and create!
Today it is cold and rainy. The perfect day to craft and push-off cleaning, doing laundry, and packing those last odds and end Christmas items away. Come make an EASY burlap wreath with me. This thing is so easy. It will surprise you. There is no sewing. No glue. If you want, it can be as simple as only three supplies. Have I got your attention?
though for $2.49.
The first step is to cut your burlap into strips. I used strips that were about 10″ by 1.5″. Depending on the size of your ring and how you want your wreath to look, you may want longer or fatter strips. One easy way to cut burlap straight is to pull out a thread and cut down the open space as you see below.
Next, you fold one of your burlap strips in half and place it behind the metal ring.
You then wrap the ends of your burlap around the ring and pull them through the looped part of your burlap strip.
Simply pull the ends tight and flip them out of the circle to create the first part of your wreath.
That is the basic step. You just repeat that all the way around your wreath with additional burlap strips. Depending on the size of your ring, it will depend on how many burlap strips you use. I wanted a really full wreath. The fuller the wreath is, the easier your wreath will have pieces that stick straight out and up at the end. Rather than them flopping over or forward as the wreath is hung up.
Once you have stuffed as many burlap strips on as you can, your wreath is done! I think the simplicity looks really beautiful. It could be left alone like that. Which gives it a multi purpose function. It would be cute as a table’s centerpiece with flowers or something in the middle too. I see a pumpkin in the center in the fall!
I hung my wreath in my office for now. I’m sure I will move it at some point, but for now I really love the rustic natural look with all the color I have going on in there.
I browsed my scrapbook collection and found a piece that I wanted to use. One 12″ x 12″ piece was enough paper for all four 4″ x 6″ frames. I used the glass from the frame to cut the paper the right size. Once I had four sheets of paper for my frames, I set them aside and started on the letters.
I used just plain brown wrapping paper and stenciled my letters on to it. The brown paper was to act as my guide to cut my burlap latter, since it’s hard to write on burlap. See below.
I picked up my brown paper and placed a small square of burlap behind it. As I cut my letter out, I made sure to cut the burlap layer as well. This gave me a burlap letter without having sharpie markings on it (as sharpie might be the only thing that would have shown a stencil traced on burlap).
After all the letters were in frames, my new wall art was complete! It was such a simple craft. I love that I can easily switch this art out to use the frames for something else, but for now I have some fun, cheap wall art. I want to try this same idea, but with animal silhouettes instead of letters.
