christmas tree craft

  Today is one of those days where any little thing will send me flailing over the edge. What a long week! The good news is that I got everything done and this morning I had a successful crafty time with my D's 3rd grade class. I was in charge of coming up with a small craft for them to make.

I was truly stumped on what project to tackle. This month's Martha Stewart magazine saved the day—sort of. There is a Christmas tree decoration made out of paper that I thought would do the trick. As I worked on making a sample, I quickly realized that the kids would have a hard time with all the folds. So... here is my very simplified tree that was inspired by the MS tree.

Materials
- Dowel (1/4" in diameter x 9")
- Spool (1" tall)
- Wooden ball (1/2" wide)
- PVA glue
- Three triangles made out of card stock (5" base x 7" tall x 1/4" spine - like a book cover)

The kids had a bit of a hard time with the folds for the spine but the rest was fairly easy for them. The tree can be left as is or it can be decorated with whatever comes to mind—stickers, cutouts from hole punches, small pompoms, etc. The wooden ball at the top of the tree can be a shiny bead or a star instead.



By the way, we only used three triangles because our time was limited. As you can see the dowel isn't completely covered. One more triangle would've probably solved that. This is a part of the project that can be easily customized according to what you prefer. Keep in mind that the more triangles that are added the less opportunity there is to actually decorate the tree. Whatever is placed on the triangles won't be as visible. This particular tree is very simple but it would work just as well if it had 50 triangles on it (no spine—just folded in half).



Our Friday night movie awaits. Have a great weekend everyone!

If you still need some last minute gifts (like my calendars) I will be offering a two for one deal on all my templates until Monday at 10pm EST! :)