Ornament & Christmas Card Tree display

This project is inspired by this ornament tree from Crate & Barrel. I changed up the design a bit, added some color and turned it into a Christmas card holder as well!

I started with a 2” thick piece of wood from this pile of lumber [milled by Grant]--

I used the table saw to cut 3/8” wide strips. If you don’t have an awesome husband like mine, that mills his own lumber, then you can get a 2” thick board or 2” wide molding or something similar.

 

I rigged up a little jig on the miter saw (aka chop saw) so that I could cut the crazy angles of the triangles. That only lasted for the first tree and it didn’t even work right. I probably could have spent some time and used my brain to do the math and figure out the actual angles, but I wasn’t up for that! The second tree I just laid the tree out, drew the angles and guessed on the cut. I’m precise like that , and it actually turned out a little better.

 

I drilled holes in the sides for the wire, then glued and stapled them together. I painted the big tree a light blue and the smaller tree a green with a little white over the top.

Next I stapled the small/green tree to the big/blue tree and sanded them to give them the rustic look. The tops of the trees weren’t very pretty, as in they didn’t match up like they should have had an engineer made them. So to cover that mistake up I added some hand cut stars that I drew up and nailed on. Can’t even tell how horribly I cut the angles!

 

Then I added the wire. I kept it simple by wrapping the extra wire around the back of the tree and then again around the wire itself. Nothin fancy.

 

Once the wire was on I used some E6000 and O rings (both can be found at Michaels, Joanns, or any other craft store). I had 11 small ornaments, so that is how many O rings I glued on randomly to the wires.

 

I added the little ornaments (from the Dollar Store and Wal-Mart) and mini clothes pins (at Wal-Mart) to hand up Christmas cards as we receive them.

  

    {what I used}

2” x 3/8” strips (length and amount depends on how big you want your trees)
Table Saw, Chop Saw, Scroll Saw
Wood glue, staples, 2 nails
Drill
Spray paint (colors you want the trees and stars – I used sky blue & green apple Rustoleum)
Sander (sand paper!)
Wire & wire cutters
E6000 and O rings
Little ornaments & mini clothes pins

 

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knock-off ‘hello’ shirts

I’m sure we’ve all seen the super cute ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ sweatshirts around. This shop definitely makes a very adorable sweatshirt. But I’m just not a fan of spending $35 for a piece of clothing that my kid will grow out of in a year or less, not to mention stain or somehow destroy before it can be handed down to the next kiddo.

So, to save some money I made a knock-off of my own. Instead of sweatshirts, I used some clearance short sleeve and long sleeve t-shirts for my boys.

[That’s a much better price than $35!]

And rather than copy their font, I used my own handwriting! I had to do a bunch of practice ones until I got the ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ that I liked best. I thought I’d try a ‘yo’ but I changed my mind in the end.

I use this feature a lot on my Silhouette. First I scan the things that I have handwritten, then I ‘import to my library’ in Silhouette. From then on it’s in my library and I can use it when ever I want. All you have to do is trace it so you can get the outline and the Silhouette will do the rest! Anyway, I used ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ for there shirts.

I used vinyl (from US Cutter) and peeled away the words. I transferred the vinyl to the shirts and used it as my stencil. Then, with some fabric paint from Joann’s, I painted in the ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ on the shirts. [don’t forget to put cardboard inside the shirt, so the paint doesn’t leak through to the back]. Let it sit for a few hours to dry, then peel away the vinyl and tada!

Overall it was a quick and easy project. Personally I think they turned out just as adorable as the real deal, only I saved about $90 for these three shirts. Since these were so easy, I decided to make a few other shirts. I’ll post about them when I have them done!

*Disclaimer: I was inspired by but did not replicate the exact design. The shirts are different, application is different, the font is my own.

 

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