Christmas on a Budget: Decorations

After our snowflakes and gifts, we decided to start with some trees for decorations.  With a tight budget, its easier to work with materials you already have in your home of with materials that others might have in abundance.  I am sure that all of you have magazines or know someone with lots of magazines.

Magazine Christmas Trees Tutorial

This is simply one of my favourite crafts, because I always  have loads of magazines and though we craft all the time, I defnitely don't use them all up.

Step 1

One magazine.  Sorry Pick 'n Pay - I love your magazine but today you are being used for craft! You don't need to get this specific magazine, any glossy one will do.  Just watch out for those Popular Mechanics because I know that I wasn't very popular when I suggested using them arts and crafts.  My hubby definitely did not see the humour in that suggestion at all.

Step 2:  

Open to the first page.  (keeping the step simple:)

Step 3

I could probably do this wordlessly but I have a friend who blogs who really detests lots of pictures, so the only way I can keep her motivated to keep scrolling down is to let her think that I might have something interesting to say.  Plus I was reminded this week on more than one occassion that the fact that I haven't blogged for a week is ...... let's just say .... unacceptable!  Well that will teach me, can't start a blog and though go MIA (yes missing in action!)

So fold to the centre.

Step 4

Fold again.  It looks almost like the beginning of a paper plane.

Step 5

Move it over to the left.

Step 6

And now you start from the beginning and repeat.

Step 7

Cut the bottom points off.  You're doing this otherwise the tree won't stand up straight but topple over. 

Step 8

Pull off the magazine cover. Don't worry if a page comes off with it.  Some of the covers come off that way. This is what it will look like from the back after cutting and removing the cover.

 

And if you put it against the wall, it looks fabulous. 

And if you make lots of them, which we did because we have lots of children.... just in case you didn't know (4 and counting:)

And if you want to add the stars on a stick like we did, you can find a template here

We didn't try this, but I am sure you could make an amazing centrepiece, simply by sticking two of them together with glue and adding the star.

Happy Crafting!