Part of the reason I like to get my decorating done early is so I can move on to the other very important things like eating and crafting. This year I did a really old and simple craft – magazine Christmas trees. Do you remember these? Did you make these as a kid?
Here are the instructions I saved from a magazine a few years ago when I first did this craft.
As you can see, it’s super easy to do.
HOW TO MAKE THIS CHRISTMAS CRAFT: MAGAZINE CHRISTMAS TREES
STEP ONE: BREAK THE SPINE
Open the magazine and break the spine. Sort of work it around so it’s not so flat.
STEP TWO: FOLD
FOLD # 1
Starting with the cover, take the top right hand corner and fold it in to the spine. Your page will now be a triangle with a rectangle below.
FOLD # 2
Now, take the page and it down and in to the bottom left hand corner of the spine. This fold might take a little more effort to get straight the deeper into the magazine you go. I sort of folded it at the top first and pulled it in at the bottom. Take a look at the second picture in the magazine instructions above.
FOLD #3
Fold the bottom flap up or in, which ever you prefer. The magazine instructions above just say to fold the flap up and that is what I did at first. I found an old clip from the Martha Stewart Show and they were folding the flap under so you couldn’t see it. This is a little harder to do, but I think it makes the tree a little fuller for some reason. I went back to a couple I had already done and turned my flaps under.
STEP THREE: DECORATE
Decorate your tree. Do what you would like, but I went simple. Martha’s team spray painted their trees and then sprayed them with adhesive and sprinkled glitter on them. I have seen some other ideas on Pinterest as well. I did experiment with painting the edges of one tree with gold paint. On that one, I squeezed a handful of pages together and painted the edges and then had to separate each page because they were stuck together. Ultimately I decided that most of their charm came from the fact that they were magazines and I didn’t want to cover up all that charm. I added a pom pom to the top because the top will be somewhat flat.
Place them somewhere in the house you would normally see a pile of magazines. We get so many magazines, but especially during the holiday season. A lot of them end up in the bathroom. I thought my newly painted and decorated guest bathroom was the perfect place for my magazine Christmas trees.
Some magazines are better candidates than others. I tried to choose magazines of differing sizes. Readers’ Digest are good magazines to use for the smaller version because they have lots of pages. The more pages, the thicker the tree. The best magazine for the bigger version was a Dallas magazine that has thin newspaper like pages, but a ton of them. It was a lot of work, but it’s the best one.
My daughter who is nine years old did help initially. She folded a few pages, but lost interest in this project. This craft does take a considerable amount of time and patience. She would probably be more interested in painting and decorating them than folding them.
The last time I did this craft, I tried to save them for the next year and when I pulled them out of the box, they were a little lop sided. Don’t feel bad about recycling these when the holiday is over. You know you’ll be getting more magazines next year.
This is a fun and easy Christmas craft. Give it a try.
Also, check out my post on how I redid this bathroom including painting the cabinets here.
For other Christmas related posts, check those out below.
Christmas Décor Home Tour: Red Plaid & White Reindeer
Make This Easy Christmas Wreath
Photographing Christmas Morning
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