It's the day after Christmas and I hope you all enjoyed your holiday with loved ones, holiday service, great food and lots of presents. It was my first Christmas home in the past seven years and I had a wonderful day with Tyler and visiting family. I actually took a couple days off..NO COMPUTER! So back to finishing up the final week in my {24} HOLIDAY inspirations series.
I thought it would be fun to share mine & Tyler's creative Xmas tree project in photos. what can you do with a creative vision, a simple sketch without measurements and three big cardboard boxes?
build a cardboard christmas tree?!?
Since I returned from Hawaii a week before Christmas it didn't make sense to buy a fresh tree {btw, which I adore} and after having no luck finding a vintage foil tree, I decided I should just make my tree!
I had a stack of empty cardboard boxes sitting in my studio and thought what better material to create with? I brainstormed with my sweetie Tyler and he sketched out the idea and helped me cut out the cardboard.
What started as a simple sketch and vision morphed into layers of of folded, torn, twisted and sculptured cardboard as we put the pieces together. that's the beauty of the creative process that I teach in all my workshops...be FREE and open to PLAYING. a piece of art might start in one direction but let it flow naturally and don't worry..just have fun making it!
As we were building the tree, the initial three stacks of cardboard tied with hemp string didn't seem to look like a christmas tree more like a cake. so I added triangle strips of cardboard in between each layer which were secured with a hot glue gun....and the transformation begun!
The cardboard tree without decoration was a little too minimalistic for me, so I added some of the painted cardboard I created with my handmade holiday stamps and draped my stitched leaf felt trim, colorful FABRIC garland, paper lollipops and wrapped the tree with white iridescent tinsel garland.
oh..and we had one store bought ornament..the skiing turquoise penguin!
we added hot pink LED lights..here's what the tree looks like with different lighting. {from left to right above..incandescent lights, just the pink LEDs, and in natural daylight}
hanging on the tree...a HANDMADE gift envelope for my nephew. {the envelope was made from a Trader Joe's grocery bag..I LOVE the snowman illustration...perfect all I had to do was cut and stitch!} so much better than store bought :)
p.s. don't forget to enter my Simplicity Rotary Cutter and Embosser HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY by midnight tonight!!
xoxo~treiC