12 Days of Christmas {Day 3}

{Christmas Tutorial || Pretty Glittery Trees}
I set out without a plan on how to make these pretty trees and was going on inspiration alone (from ones I had seen at Target and one that a friend has that I adore.) No picture and no plan = frustration. However, it did come together in the end and now I love them!


Materials Needed:
Styrofoam Cone (I used a large and medium sized cone - from JoAnn Fabrics)
Paint (Anything metallic, I used silver for one and metallic pearl for the other)
Brushes
Glue
Glitter
Yarn (I used some I had on hand, a thick, soft deep red. Something with a sparkle to it would be nice too.)
Stick Pins

I originally thought about using beads glued in a design up the tree... I quickly realized that was not a good idea.

I had a little elf join me. Don't you love him? I do.

Step 1 | Paint the styrofoam tree. I just worked in sections, squeezing paint directly onto the styrofoam and then brushing the paint over to cover the surface.

I'm a messy little crafter.

Step 2 | Spiral glue down the tree.

Step 3 | Generously pour glitter over the tree. I had initially planned to pour glitter onto the glue spiral and be done. However, my spiral was spread to far apart and the glitter stuck to the glue and the wet paint (which definitely took awhile to completely dry) and made my little spiral look silly, unplanned and not purposeful. So I had to come up with a step 4.

Step 4 | Cut a length of yarn (It doesn't matter, the length you can decide how wide you want your stripe and then cut off the excess.) Pin the end of the yarn to the top and wrap your yarn around the tree making a stripe. I did a about a 2-3 inch stripe, which meant I would wrap the yarn around 6x or so, but that will vary depending on the type of yarn you use. After you get the size stripe you want, cut the yarn and secure by pinning into the styrofoam.

Step 5 | Continue doing wrapping, leaving a gap that is the same width of the yarn stripe. I had 5 stripes on the medium size tree and 6 on the large tree. *Variation: You could easily skip the first few steps and simply wrap the entire tree using yarn or twine (like she did here, scroll down to see the last ornament)

And you have yourself an adorable little centerpiece!

I kind of want to do this again in lots of variations! Maybe next year I'll do an entire 'set' of trees, each treated differently, yarn, twine, mosaic pieces... the options are endless.

Give it a try and let me know how yours turns out.