4 Bookish Ideas for a DIY Holiday Tree
image: shawncalhoun
Need a last-minute holiday tree? Any old books gathering dust around your home can supply you with the eco-makings for an adorable tabletop Christmas tree. Just make sure you use books that won’t leave you feeling guilty for ripping their pages out.
These four inspiring ideas will have you rethinking all of your future holiday trees. Ready to get crafty you bookworm?
Recyclable Tree
image: macinate
For this do-it-yourself tree, you’ll need a bunch of book pages (you could also use newspaper) and a few toilet paper rolls. Using the toilet paper roll as the base of the tree, snip and glue layers of book pages into a tree-like formation. There’s no right or wrong way to do this project. Find your artistic side and get creative with your tree. Brownie points if you top it with a homemade star.
O Stackable Tree
image: shawncalhoun
This tree might require more building skills than craft skills, so put your construction hat on. First, grab a stack of books with covers in the same color scheme (preferably green.) To erect this tree, start by arranging several books in a circle to form the base of your “tree.” Then begin to layer on the rest of the books, building like you would with blocks and working in a circle. Add layers until the top of your tree holds just one book. Adjust the books so the corners stick out to resemble branches.
Place ornaments or other holiday knickknacks in the nooks and crevices created by the books to add some embellishment to your holiday tree. Crown your do-it-yourself tree with a bow or other creative topper.
Upside down tree
image: eclecticlibrarian
This quick fix tree will make you smile. And it doesn’t require any crafty skills to make. Take a book, open it down the middle, flip it over, and prop it up like a tent. Then stack increasingly smaller books in the same format on top of each other until you have a small tree of books.
Don’t worry if your makeshift tree looks lopsided. A skewed foundation just adds more charm to this tree. Don’t forget to place a book or two as-is under your “tree” to form a base.
Page-turning tree
image: Littlelixie
You know when you were a kid and you created a “perfect” heart by snipping around a folded piece of construction paper? This tree uses the same concept.
To craft this literary tree, first remove a few pages from a book. Try to keep the binding together. Then, cut out half of a Christmas tree through all of the pages, keeping the fold intact. Open up the pages and glue the end pieces together. Voila. A 3D page-turner of a tree.
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