Hi, this is Korrie from Red Hen Home! This post is DAY 2 of the Christmas in July series I am participating in with all these talented ladies:
Christmas in July?? Whose crazy idea was THAT??
(I’m blaming Amanda.)
Honestly, I am not a person who plans that far in advance. My sights are always set on the next thing, so I can’t really concentrate on Christmas until Thanksgiving is over!
So my goal was to create a little Christmas without going to the store! Never-you-mind that Hobby Lobby is already putting out their Christmas stuff—I don’t want to encourage them!
So I decided to tackle a few items that have been swimming around in my head since last Christmas…hope you don’t mind that I’m seven months late (rather than five months early)!
I have a beautiful old buffet that I love to change with the seasons—since I don’t have a mantle! This is what it looked like on a recent hot July day, much to the confusion of my four-year-old daughter!
Last summer I turned some old books into birdhouses, and some commenters mentioned that they had seen book Christmas trees. I decided to give it a shot, and they were super simple to figure out and make on my own.
- Fold the top corner of page to the spine.
- Fold page to spine again.
- Fold up “tail” at bottom of page even with bottom of book.
- Repeat ad nauseum (that means…”until you’re nauseous”)
About 200 pages makes for a nice, fat tree. And I promise I won’t tell if sometimes you fold two pages at once!
Ta-da!
Hmm…they could use a little embellishment, don’t you think? They are supposed to be Christmas trees after all!
This one gets a garland of jingle bells strung on twine, and a book page star for the top…
…the next one gets a garland of cotton string and gold-glittered stars, topped with a book page medallion…
…and the last has a garland of cotton cording and Scrabble letters, topped by a seam-binding flower (yes, it’s my favorite)!
And of course, all of them were embellished with a little glitter along the edges. Everything looks better with glitter!
Last but not least, I had to add a little more typography! I had a 14” x 14” canvas on hand just waiting for some attention from me…
Using two shades of gold acrylic paint, I gave the canvas a nice base coat. I used my Silhouette to design and cut out vinyl “Merry Christmas” greetings in various languages, then I painted over the whole thing, removed the vinyl, and voila!
So there you have it! Put together with a few accessories I already hand on hand, it was a good excuse to take down the 4th of July décor 
Happy Summer, everyone!
I hope you will take the time to visit all the blogs participating in our Christmas in July party!
Looks great Korrie. I love the book trees. I made some for a Christmas gift last year. Yours are just lovely. The scrabble one is my favorite too.
ReplyDeleteHolly
Years ago when I was in Girl Scouts we made those same book trees excepting we spray painted them gold and made angels. :) A little wooden ball on the top with a face painted, a halo made from gold pipe cleaners and wings cut out and glued to the pages. :D Fun seeing this come back.
ReplyDeleteAwesome!!! I love those little trees and that canvas is really pretty!
ReplyDeleteMerry Summer!
those are adorable!!! thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSo cute!!! I would never think to make book page Christmas trees like this! Pinning this!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like something I can do, and I think they are darn cute, so I'm pinning 'em.
ReplyDelete~Bliss~
Sweet! Love this... Remember to bring this idea back out in December again. Great little idea.
ReplyDelete