Oh Christmas Trees Oh Christmas Trees ( a holiday tutorial)

"The glory of Lebanon shall come unto you, the cypress, the pine, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious." Isaiah 60:13

This year, I've decided to dress up the Dower House living room for Christmas.  

It's not something I usually do, although in the past I've made a Christmas scene in Land's End (A Land's End Christmas- 2015)  and also a small roombox- Victorian Bliss, both dedicated to and in memory of my mother who LOVED the Christmas season. 

Anyhoosie:  My ongoing complaint is that I never seem to have enough room for a Christmas tree in any of my displays, which is why I usually don't bother. 

But this year, I decided to squeeze in a small tree for the table top in front of the Dower House Living room window.  

Initially I used a bottle brush tree, but later I removed it in order to make a slightly smaller tree entirely from scratch, which I'm going to demonstrate in this post. 

FYI: I purposefully chose NOT to electrify it with mini lights as I find they don't photograph well.  What I did instead, was swap out the original non-working table lamp with the black shade,with its working TWIN, a decision I'm glad I've made.

NOw on with the show......

I used toothpicks for the trunks 

I coloured them with a brown felt pen.
which was an unnecessary step, but I did it anyway.

I stained more than I needed
in case one of the toothpicks broke
which it did
as I was working with it.

I used a metal hair comb
which I found at the thrift store in a package of 2.

I removed the beads and saved them for another project

Then I unwound the metal from the shaft.

Beginning approx. 1/3 up from the end of the stick,
I wrapped the metal up and around the wood.

As I wrapped the metal

 I also spaced the branches.  

I used pliers to crimp the metal against the toothpick.
This is where I accidently snapped the wood
 because I'd applied too much pressure.
After the wire was secured 
I clipped the rounded loops from the ends
of the metal comb


I spread the cut loops apart to fill out the gaps

The branches were then cut into graduated lengths 
of a Christmas tree.

I used a Super Glue on the wood and the metal
along the entire length of the tree to prevent the
wire from sliding off.

This is what it looked like

 

After the Super glue was dry

I painted the entire skeleton with 

brown acrylic paint

This is what it looked like.

Once the paint was dry it was time to add the greenery.

I used an instant Fast Grab glue
 to adhere the greenery to the tree limbs.

GLUING IS THE MOST TIME CONSUMING
The lycopodium contains a preservative 
which makes getting an instant bond more 
 frustrating than you'd think.


I ran the glue along the metal branch and then 
pressed the lycopodium onto each of the limbs.
Each application took a lot of glue and several tries. 

Gaps between the branches were filled in with 
additional snippets of greenery,
which was glued either to the main trunk 
or onto the sides of the metal branches.

Then tiny snippets of the Lycopodium 
were glued around the tip of the toothpick.

This  is the finished tree
ready for decorating. 

One of the reasons I wanted to have a wire 
armature for this tree, was to support the tiny candles I intended to make for it. 

For the candle cups
I used some mini gold tube confetti 

I used cotton swabs from the Japanese dollar store, 
which are thinner than a conventional Q-Tip.
Below is a comparison of the toothpick
I used for the tree trunk alongside 
 the Japanese cotton swab I used for the candles

The swab was cut into small sections 
with the ends glued into the gold confetti cups.



The candles were glued onto a wire stem
which supports their weight
and prevents them from tilting inwards
towards the centre of the tree.


For the flames on the candles 
I crushed some red glass beads and glued
them to the tops of the candles. 


 I used a pair of bent nosed pliers to crush the beads and 
then picked out the most viable to glue to the candle tops.




From 2 metal hair combs I was able to make 
4 old-fashioned
CHRISTMAS TREES









and that's it- 

but that's not all
Here are a few more tiny 
Christmas trees I've made over the years.
The one below is less than an inch high
from top to bottom.

Here it is with a pen nib for scale

A few years ago, 
I was on a mission to bleach and dye
every bottle brush tree I owned
and these are some of the survivors. 
 The pastel groupings are 
 about 1.5 inches tall.
Rather than kit them out with ornaments, 
I wrapped them in strands of pink iridescent filaments
which catches the lights and sparkles like glitter.
 These trees appear to be spun in cotton candy
EASY PEASY





"Oh CHRISTMAS TREES 
Oh Christmas Trees 
How lovely are your branches!"

THE END

p.s. I'll have another post up before Christmas
 until then....
🎄

elizabeth

As a reminder:  I'm still having problems with the comment section. If you try to leave one before the sidebar finally appears, or before the whirly-thing in the tab stops twirling, then your comment won't register.  This can take up to 60 seconds before the program stops loading and finally kicks in- Talk about frustrating!😕 

oh well,... it IS what it is. 🤪