Wrapping Paper and Floral Cone Christmas Trees

A Great Holiday Kid's Craft

Floral Foam Cones Put Old Wrapping Paper to Good Use in a Kid-friendly Craft Project

Here's a pretty holiday craft project to do with the kids. If you're like me, you have lots of old wrapping paper scraps that could be put to good use.

Avoid one of those "oh no - now what?!" snow days by laying in the other supplies before the storm. Then surprise the kids with some creative fun on your "found day" together!

Depending on your/their choice of wrapping paper, these decorative trees would be suitable for Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa or just plain winter.

Wrapping Paper Christmas Tree Materials

• Oasis floral foam cones (the green type " not white Styrofoam) - examples are two 6-inch and one 9-inch green oasis cones. If you buy the pointed ones cut off about ¾" to make a flat area before you decoupage them.
• Wrapping paper - your choice of design and color
• 1-inch circle paper punch
• Two ¾-inch wood balls
• One 1-inch wood ball
• 1 yard of silver plastic strung beads or other color of your choice
• ½ yard of decorative white trim
• Hot glue gun or Aleene's Clear Gel Tacky Glue - for the kid-friendly version
• Ceramcoat Metallic Silver acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Mod Podge Decoupage Medium
• Iridescent white glitter
• Blue (or color of your choice) glitter - optional for the trim
• Elmer's Glue-All - optional

How to Make the Christmas Tree

Cover the tree with one thick coat of Mod Podge. This will make for a smoother surface.

Let dry.

In the meantime, use the paper punch to cut out about 100 circles from the wrapping paper.

[ Tip: Using wrapping paper with a lot of background color and a small amount of detail comes out really cute. Just cut out more of the background and some of the detail and use the detailed circles sporadically around the tree. ]

Starting at the bottom of the tree, decoupage overlapping circles all around.

You don't need to worry about spacing them evenly around the tree as this will not change the appearance when done.

Continue doing layers of the circles around the tree starting each new row between two circles in the row below.

You do not want to have any of the cone showing; so overlapping as you build up and around will cover it nicely.

When you get to the top, the last row will have some overhang. Decoupage the overhanging pieces together and let dry.

When dry, fold the excess paper down over the top.

Coat the entire tree one more time with a coat of Mod Podge.

When dry, use a glue gun (or Tacky Glue) to glue the strung beading in a spiral starting from the top of the tree. You could also drape swags of beading as you would a garland on a tree.

Glue a wood ball on top.

The 1-inch ball goes on the 9-inch cone and the smaller ones on the smaller cones.

Paint two coats of silver paint on each ball.

Paint a second coat and immediately sprinkle on the white glitter while the paint is still wet.

Glue strung beading around the bottom of each ball.

Glue the trim to the bottom of each tree.

To add sparkle to the trim you can add glitter accents with Elmer's Glue-All and some blue glitter.