For the last decade or so it has been our tradition to cut down our own Christmas tree in the woods each year. We’ve had plenty of adventures with getting stuck in snow, bears, and hunters. With all the wildfires in our region in the past few years it has been harder and harder to find small trees suitable for cutting, and it has been more stressful than fun lately. We also feel like the trees need to stay where they are. So we decided to build our own reusable Christmas tree out of pallet wood, paracord, tiny hooks, and decoupaged paper. I found every scrap of green paper in the house and used 2 whole bottles of Mod Poge. We used a fence post bracket to attach the “trunk” to the tree so we can collapse it down for storage. We decided to make it out of hexagons. I did the math and my husband cut and nailed the pieces together. I helped him sand them down, assembled everything, and the whole family decoupaged it together. I love the way it turned out! And as a bonus, the decoupaged green paper has a lot of cool pictures in it (frogs, lizards, a quetzal, etc.) so it is like our own little search and find. Also, The lights can stay on so I don’t have to put lights on the tree every year (my least favorite part of decorating).
Creative! I love how it was a family creation … and how it can collapse down. My kids would love the I-Spy game built in with all the scrappy-finds. This is an awesome project!
Thank you! My kids definitely loving the I-spy. They are also being very specific about some ornaments being next to specific pictures. (Like the fish ornament gong next to a fish picture). It took ages to cut out and sort all the green bits from our scrapbook paper and collage magazines though.
This is amazing! Every year that you put this up, you’ll be reminded of all the fun and love that went into its creation! What an awesome family project!
This is utterly fascinating! I love that you have all come together to create your tree, so the memory of making it becomes a part of its story. Amazing.
The hooks really do work better than normal tree branches! Though it was a lot harder to find tiny hooks than we thought it would be (our local hardware stores were all out) and we had to predrill holes for all of them so they wouldn’t break as we put them in. you can also use the tiers of the tree as shelves if you want (which I think would make a really cool store display for plants or figurines). If I was better at keeping plants alive I’d put tiny plant pots on them, but I seem to kill plants just by looking at them.
I love all the green scraps of paper you used, instead of adhering pine bristle scrapbooking paper. National Geographic pages? Or maybe Ranger Rick?
It looks sturdy, so the cats can’t knock it over. This is the first Christmas for our cats and so far they’ve been chill about the trees, but we’ll see.
The green bits are literally every green paper object we had in our art and craft supplies. There are pages from archeology and nature magazines (national geographic and ranger Rick included), origami paper, wrapping paper scraps, even a few produce stickers from oranges and bananas that were green. I do a fair amount of collage art so I had a file folder full of “green” that we used up. We tried to go from light green on top to dark green at the bottom. It will take ages to replenish the supply of green paper.
It is very sturdy. I don’t think a cat could knock it over (my kids can’t). Cats and trees can definitely be problematic. We only have guinea pigs these days, but when our old cat was still alive and we were getting live trees she knocked them over twice. She also always drank the tree water and ate pine needles. We got sick of it and started getting a small tree that we’d put up high where she couldn’t get to it as easily, but she sure did her best to foil our plans.
There are pages from archeology and nature magazines (national geographic and ranger Rick included), origami paper, wrapping paper scraps, even a few produce stickers from oranges and bananas that were green. I do a fair amount of collage art so I had a file folder full of “green” that we used up. We tried to go from light green on top to dark green at the bottom. It will take ages to replenish the supply of green paper.
Congratulations! Your amazing Pallet Wood Christmas tree is a featured project this week!