Sunday, December 11, 2011

Paper Trees






I was inspired to try my hand at making paper trees after seeing these trees in the December issue of Cottages and Bungalows Magazine.

Source

They look like they are made out of pieces of birch. Aren't they beautiful?

There are several versions of paper trees out in blogland (I noticed after making mine) and each one is slightly different. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel (or tree). This is just my version.



Here is how I did it:

Supplies to make one small (9") and one large (12") paper tree:

One 3 7/8” x 8 7/8 “ Styrofoam cone, one 4 7/8” x 11 7/8” Styrofoam cone, eight 12” x 12” sheets of scrapbooking paper, tree topper template, low temp glue sticks, glue gun, pencil, ruler, scissors, pinking shears or paper edgers.

1. Mark wrong side of 7 pieces of scrapbooking paper in a 1” inch by 3” grid. The small tree takes about 2 ½ sheets and the larger tree takes about 4 ½ sheets. The two tree toppers can be cut from one piece of scrapbooking paper.



2. Cut center line with straight scissors and then cut each half down the middle with pinking shears. Each piece of paper will have one decorative edge and one straight edge.



3. Cut each strip at the one inch marked lines.



4. Using a pencil curl each strip by pulling it across the pencil right side up.



5. Starting one inch up from the bottom, begin gluing paper strips to cone overlapping each strip a ¼ inch so that none of the cone shows. Continue in this manner all the way around the cone moving up a half in each time and ending with the last row even with top of cone.



6. Trace the tree topper template onto the scrapbooking paper and cut bottom edges with pinking shears and use straight scissors to cut side strips. Curl strips using pencil. Roll into cone shape overlapping a strip or two and adjusting to how you want it to look on the top of the tree. Glue edge of tree topper and once it is set glue it to the top of the tree.



That is all there is to it!



The instructions and template can be downloaded from here or the sidebar under Free Patterns.

Sharing with Censational Girl , It's Overflowing and Beneath My Heart.

2 comments:

MadMad said...

Love it! And the writing on the paper makes it look like bark (at least from afar). Very cool.

Unknown said...

This tree is SUPER CUTE! You're ready to open your own boutique!! Thanks for linking up at Overflowing with Creativity!!!

XO,
Aimee from ItsOverflowing.com