Christmas Notebook

In 2005, I was perusing the book Mary Engelbreit’s Christmas Companion and saw a picture on page 68 of a little tree that the author called a “collage tree.” I knew right then that I was going to make one. The hardest part of this project is assembling the bits and pieces to cover the tree. It takes longer than you would imagine it might. And it takes more pieces than you dream it will!

My tree is taller and skinnier that Mary’s was, but it’s just as cute and has been the source of many compliments over the years. I call mine an “I Spy” tree. Everyone is captivated by it!

My tree is a styrofoam tree, originally spraypainted gold (now silver), and glued to a lazy Susan base so it turns easily.

Even Cedar finds it interesting!

I collected items from toy boxes, junk drawers, sewing supplies, my craft room, the tool drawer, desk drawers, kitchen drawers, etc. Any small gluable item was fair game. I also hit the Dollar General store where I could buy bags of small plastic animals for $1.00. I purchased a bag of farm animals and a bag of animals from the ocean. Those added a lot to the I Spy tree. Do you spy the horse?

And the starfish? (Not to mention the macaroni…?)

A hot glue gun worked fine for attaching the items to the styrofoam base, though it might work even better to first cover the styrofoam with burlap or fabric. Whether you cover the styrofoam or not, do spray paint the base tree before you glue items to it. After the tree is full, there will be a lot of little nooks and crannies than can be hard to cover with spray paint.

I spy a pump! And a toothbrush!

Because my tree was going to serve as a Christmas tree, I added small round ornaments and a string of tiny plastic Christmas lights I found in the miniature tree aisle at Hobby Lobby.

And a star to the top.

I added a wooden block with the initial of our last name.

After everything was glued to the tree base, I spray painted the tree. Making it all one color makes the “spying” a little harder for the little ones which makes the game more fun. And it also unifies the tree so it isn’t a crazy quilt of color. It becomes pretty enough to grace a side table, a child’s desk or some other special spot in your home.

I made the tree for my daughter when she was seven years old. She loved it then and our granddaughters love it now. They will be seven this fall.

We take turns spying objects for the others to find. They will play this game for 30 minutes or more at a time, even though they know where many of the objects are. It seems they always find something new.

My sister Genny took the idea to work with her. She is the parts manager at a car dealership. She collected odd bits and pieces of small car parts and made her own themed tree. It is displayed in the parts department each Christmas and gets a lot of attention from both customers and parts crew. I like the way her tree sits up on something (not sure what it is…). Mine sits right on the lazy Susan. I may have to change that. Maybe I’ll use a flowerpot…

If you want to make one of these for Christmas, start your collection of little items now. It can take a while to find enough to cover the tree, depending on the size of your tree. A lot of different themes could be used…a baby tree, a kitchen tree, a craft room tree, a sports tree, a fishing tree, etc. If you make one, I would love to see a picture!

~~Rhonda

One Christmas project I failed to post about when it was finished last season was our chalkboard Christmas tree. You may remember that we made our first chalkboard tree in 2012. It was a Scandanavian style tree, using the one pictured on the blog A Legg Up as a guide. That blogger found the tree on a decor website. Her inspiration was a wall hanging with the tree printed on fabric. It is no longer available on that site.

This was our finished project. My sister Genny did the drawing. I made patterns and “gave advice.” Right, Genny?

After some deliberation, I decided we would attempt the Twelve Days of Christmas for our 2013 chalkboard tree. I googled the theme and clicked IMAGES for inspiration. I chose the ones I liked and adapted patterns from them to fit the size that needed to be filled.

Genny divided the tree into twelve spaces. I chalked the back of each pattern with white chalk and Genny traced over the pattern to transfer it onto the chalkboard. Then she began the task of filling in the color. Using colored chalk was fun. It made a great contrast to the white chalk tree we had the year before.

In progress.

I can’t remember now, but for some reason we didn’t like the first rendition of the Two Turtle Doves. As you can see in this picture, we changed them a bit. They do show up better second time around. The design of the Five Golden Rings was changed, also. Much better in the second version.

Almost done. Genny added twinkling stars to give some fill to the background.

We also decided to change the color of the branches. The light orange in the previous picture didn’t seem right to me. The green was better. Genny added a bow to the top, holly to the ends of the branches and a quote over all. Two kitties were perfect under the tree. That’s Zak on the left and Cedar on the right.

And, yes, when we count how many trees we put up for Christmas, we count this one, too. It takes more time to “decorate” than some of our other large trees do!

This year, I am considering a Chrismon Tree as our chalkboard tree. Of course, there’s still time to change my mind…

~~Rhonda