flippy bookpage trees!

i knew i wanted to include some new little tabletop trees to my decor this year- i wanted something a little more neutral than the ones i've made in the past. i decided to try a variation of the curly book page trees you see everywhere, except i didn't want mine quite so curly- more like flippy.

flippy bookpage trees

i was in the dollar tree, planning to get some party hats to use as my tree bases when i saw these! i was seriously irrationally happy that they're carrying these this year & seriously resisting the urge to hoard up 20 or 30 of them...

i was standing there with 2 of them in my hot little clutches, thinking how much i wished they had a bigger size, when i just happened to think of these floral foam bases:

 put them together, and presto!

my little secret to get hot glue to stick to these without melting the foam is to wrap them in masking tape. so, since i was going to wrap them in masking tape anyways, i just started by wrapping the 2 pieces together  & then wrapped the rest as usual... making a tree of the same size, except slightly taller! love it!  it worked like a charm, & ya'll, i felt like a genius!

[please excuse the terrible dark crafting-at-night photos- it's terribly un-blog-worthy, but the only time i can get any crafting done in peace with little ones!]

all i did from there was tear some book pages into strips, cutting a fringe in one half of the long side. i bent up the fringe ever so slightly until it looked like a little skirt. the non-fringed edge is what you glue to the cone:

 i cut a circle of paper to fit the tops & bottoms exactly & also added a solid strip at the bottom so the cone wouldn't show through the first row of fringe. keep gluing your fringe strips all the way up the tree from bottom to top!

 at the top, just make sure your top fringe is even with the little circle. you can add a star or leave it plain, of course. gently brush your hand up the fringes from the bottom to the top to fluff it up a little.

and done!

i'll be putting mine are on my thrifty candlesticks, to give a bit of background to our nativity. stick around a few more days to see what i did with the smaller 2 dollar store trees!