Cupcake Liner Christmas Tree, Elmer’s Holiday #GlueNGlitter

I have a couple of gaping holes on either side of my mantle that present some decorating challenges. Anything I put there ends up looking cluttery, unless it is the right scale.  I spent some time looking at ordering some smaller Christmas trees. I thought something like this fancy feather tree from Z Gallery would be really pretty.

That’s when I remembered my great idea from back in the summer, when I was a little obsessed with everything to do with cupcake liners. Do you remember these nametags?  I’d send you to read about them but the post has gone missing 🙁

Anyway, after making them for Girl’s Night Out this summer, I thought of a million things I could use cupcake liners for, one being Christmas trees. Originally I had thought I’d make something small and sweet but for this spot, I’d have to pull out the big guns.

I’m lucky I have a Wal-Mart around the corner from my house since it is a big journey to the nearest craft store, and Walmart had everything I needed for this project. You can follow my Google+ shopping trip to see the Elmers projects I was shopping for.

Here’s what I got for this project.

• Large sheets of posterboard (2 per tree)
• X-ACTO Precision scissors
• coffee filters
• jumbo cupcake liners
• regular cupcake liners
• CraftBond™ Scrapbooking Tape – Permanent
• Elmers Craft Bond Sparkle Glue
• Optional: Dot runners, glue sticks, mini foil liners for decorations

I had the coffee filters on hand. I wasn’t sure which adhesives would work best so I grabbed a few of them. The bottom of this picture is the posterboard I bought at Walmart, as well. If you want your trees as big as mine, you will need two pieces of posterboard for each tree. But you can do these at any size. Initially I was thinking party hats would work great as a base because they are pre-formed.  But they don’t make 3ft party hats so…

I was glad to have BSB around to help me figure out this part. He rolled the posterboard into a cone. We used CraftBond™ Scrapbooking Tape – Permanent to adhere the posterboard to itself and it worked really well, it is quite strong. And easy to use since it it double-sided. Then he evened out the bottom of the cone, but there was still a gap, since we were keeping these big. we made a second cone and stuck it inside the first cone to fill the gap. The entire thing will be covered, so it doesn’t matter if it’s too pretty. As long as you have an even edge on the bottom. I use a couple of my $3 DIY cake stands to hold the trees. They make a nice “trunk.”

You’ll notice I started with coffee filters. I pretty much consider them to be an extra-large cupcake liner, when it come to crafting purposes. They have a somewhat softer look, and would be pretty on their own, but I only used them for the bottom third of my tree. The diagram above shows how you prep the coffee filters. Do the exact same thing for cupcake liner. Cut out the inside circle. Cut the ruffled part in half and begin attaching overlapping ruffled to your tree.

After the coffee filters, I started in with the jumbo cupcake liners. The top thirds is regular-sized cupcake liners (for a smaller tree you could use minis).

You can use a lot of different adhesives to do this, but I found the double-sided options from Elmer’s really expedite the situation. I started using the dot runner. It made it really fast, but I didn’t always use enough adhesive or press down hard enough. I tried the regular glue sticks, and they work, but you have to hold things in place while they dry. I really liked using the Elmers Craft Bond tape. I could put strips on the cone, peel off the backing and press the liners on the adhesive. It holds really well.

One cupcake-liner at the top finishes it off nicely.

My daughter asked if I was going to spray paint them green. Not the vision I had in mind, but I did want to add a little frosty bling.

So I pulled out the glitter glue!

I found it worked best to squeeze a bead of glitter glue on alternating “leaves”. I then took a paint brush and spread the glitter around on that leave for a subtle sparkle effect.

At this point, I was pretty much in love! I had visions of a winter wedding with one of these trees serving as a centerpiece on each table, creating a winter forest through out the room. Ironically, only a couple of days later, I got a call from a friend to help throw a wedding for a couple who had been wanting to get married for a long time but hadn’t been able to come up with the funds to do it. They rallied a bunch of talented friends to throw them this winter wedding. I did flowers and photography, and my trees served as the backdrop for their vows. Pretty good for their debut!

Everyone who has seen them has asked me about them. Hopefully later this week, I will give you a Holiday Home Tour and show you how they look flanking my mantle. I think they’ll be staying up all of January!

Click on the image above for a chance to win the entire Elmer’s wall at Wal-mart! That’s a $250 value!  You could create your own winter trees, wrap your Christmas presents, or make a myriad of other projects!

This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #ElmersHoliday #gluenglitter #collectivebias #CBias all projects and opinions are my own.