Monday 1 December 2014

TWINKLING LIGHTS AND LITTLE WOODEN TREES














Are you in the festive mood yet? I am so excited for Christmas and plan to decorate my house (inside and out!) next weekend. I tend to buy something each year to add to my growing collection of Christmas decorations but it is also nice to add personal home made touches.

Last year I came across a bag of little wooden hearts at Hobbycraft so naturally snapped them up with the hope of creating something with them at some stage. When Christmas approached I noticed that there were now little wooden trees up for grabs, so naturally I bought those too! They languished in a cupboard until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to do something with them. I wanted to create a little homemade decoration filled with lights and snowy trees. What I created was not the exact vision I had in mind but I have a little decoration hand made by me to add to our festive home.

I am not sure if these are for sale any longer, however, I have provided links at the bottom of the page if you feel so inspired to create something similar yourself!

I started by laying out the trees to see how many I had and of what size.

 They are lovely just on their own but I decided to paint them in 2 shades of green ready for a Christmas forest filled with festive trees.
















I almost stopped here as I can get very blinkered by bright, shiny and glittery but as it's meant to be festive, all that bling is warranted!

I added snowy branches which I dabbed in white glitter to give a frosty effect, then added glittery baubles and tinsel. It was difficult to stop there!!





























They needed bling, right?!















Now they looked like Christmas trees! All I needed now was something to put them on. A reader asked if I was making hanging decorations for the tree which I felt was a great idea but I already had my mind set on some sort of lighted stand up decoration. I toyed with the idea of tea light holders but felt that not much light would show through and they would likely get scorched on the back. The trunks of the trees are wide enough to be glued to something so I went looking for a suitable plinth to put them on. Luckily, my husband does a lot of DIY and has plenty of off cuts of wood at my disposal. I found an already painted piece just the right size for the trees so just needed to paint it green to match the trees with a little of glitter paint to give it a frosty effect.












This could have been left white as if the trees were sitting on a blanket of snow.

I then purchased 2 boxes of small LED lights which I was hoping to stick on the trees by drilling holes in them. Sadly when I examined the lights more closely I saw this would be pretty impossible. Now I was stuck. I had got so far and felt anything else just wouldn't look right. I thought about purchasing a different set of lights until my husband suggested I attach them to the branches of the trees instead. We agreed that glueing the trees to one another would also help to keep wires out of the way.













As you can see from the picture, the lights aren't the right shape to go through holes in the trees.

 I used my hot glue gun to attach the wire of the lights to the branches of the largest trees, then again covered one side of one tree with hot glue and put them together.

 Lit up and glued.











2 trees completed using 4 of the largest trees. It's not as neat as I would have liked.












All the trees were then hot glued to the plinth. I joined the large and medium trees together but left the smallest as they were. I did paint the other side of the smaller trees, but left them plain.

With the other set of lights, I attached part to the front of the plinth to illuminate the front trees while using some of it to go over the branches of one of the medium sized trees. I used the reminder of the original set of lights to do the same with the other medium tree. I attached it all using my hot glue gun.

When they are all lit up they really do look pretty and festive and I cannot wait to add it into all our other festive bits of pieces at the weekend.

 Even though it wasn't quite the design I had originally in mind, the outcome has been a good one.








To make your own version you will need the following type of items.

Wooden Christmas trees - £1.50 to £4.30 depending on size and quantity
Battery operated LED lights - £2.99 per pack
Acrylic paint in varying colours
I used glitter and glitter paint for the trees
Hot glue gun. I have this one - £5.00
Off cut of wood.

Happy crafting!

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