Paper or Plastic Whimsical Christmas Trees

So can you tell that I can't get enough of free craft projects lately? - (Especially in the Christmas variety.)  I have more paper fun to share with you today in the way of old magazines plus I threw in a little twist with plastic - we'll get to that in a minute.

First up are the two treess I made from an old magazine.  

I knew I wanted to make some sort of christmas tree topiaries but I didn't have a foam tree form so I decided to just make one out of the magazine cover (who needs to spend money on something easily makable?).  Simply roll your paper into a cone and hot glue in a few places to hold it together.  After  you have it glued you are going to have and uneven cone so just cut off the extra paper to have a level surface for it to stand.  

Next you just cut your paper into strips of about 1.5" and then fold in half length wise and glue together.  

Now cut slits along your strip of paper, I didn't even try to make this even.

After you have accumulated enough strips to cover your tree - I used about 12- simply glue your strips of paper around the tree form until it's fully covered.  I used hot glue for this part as well.

The next one I made pretty much the same way except I did not fold my paper strips so they would be a little more fluffy.

This last one was made from old plastic grocery bags.  Using my magazine tree form, I cut out small squares of plastic grocery bag, bunched it up a bit to a point and hot glued square after square until my little heart was content.  I have to warn that I hot glued my fingers several times on this one - that glue will burn straight through that thin plastic and you will know immediately when it does.

The possibilities with these trees are endless.  You can use all kinds of things around your house to cover them - ribbon, feathers, twigs, glitter and on and on.  I think these little trees would be so cute for table centerpieces, especially if you had a lot of tables to cover and not a lot of money to spend.  You could also make them in various heights and group them together for a sweet Christmas tree gathering. 

I think mine are going to sit on some cute pillar candle holders I have in the middle of our table, that is when our table doesn't look like this anymore...

Haha, I am such a messy crafter.  I can't make stuff any other way.  It's either all over the place or I can't think.  Nice isn't it?  I thought you might enjoy the laugh.  Have fun making crafty messes this weekend!