Christmas DIY Tutorial: Light Up Decorative Christmas Trees

'Tis the season to be making, and we've a cute Christmas DIY Tutorial in store for you on today's blog post! Made from scraps of our Stick It® Self Adhesive Lampshade Material and Christmas wrapping paper, our light up decorative Christmas trees would make a perfect table centre piece, or a twinkling festive scene on a shelf or sideboard. Follow our step by step tutorial to find out how to make your own cheerful versions!

What you’ll need to make a Light Up Decorative Christmas Tree

• Wrapping paper, paper or brown paper

• Olfa AK-1 Standard Arta & Graphics Cutter

• Less Rigid Stick It® Lampshade Making PVC (approximately 21cm x 31cm for the small tree and 23 x 33cm for the large tree)

• Wrapping Paper - we used papers from Sostrene Green and John Lewis

• 9mm Tesa Double Sided tape

• 3 x LED Lights

• Sellotape or masking tape

• Scissors

• Small piece of sturdy scrap cardboard (10 x 10cm)

• Cutting mat

• Pencil

• Rubber

How to make a Light Up Decorative Christmas Tree

Preparation

To create your tree templates, you can either use the Lampshade Design and Pattern Forming Tool using the following sizes, or alternatively use our PDF templates that we’ve already made for you!

Small tree

• Top - 0

• Botton - 110mm

• Height - 200mm

Large tree

• Top - 0

• Botton - 110mm

• Height - 150mm

  
  

Small Light Up Christmas Tree 2

.pdf

Download PDF • 12KB

Large Light Up Christmas Tree 2

.pdf

Download PDF • 12KB

Printing your PDFs

To print your PDF, open the template in Adobe choose the ‘poster’ option to tile the template into two sheets.

1. Print and cut away the margin on one sheet flush with the red lines. Overlap and tape the two sheets then cut out.

2. Place your paper template onto the paper backing of the Less Rigid Stick it® and drawn round.

3. Cut out, then with the backing paper face down, lay onto your chosen paper, considering the direction of any pattern, ensuring it runs from the top to the bottom of the tree.

4. Removing a 5cm section of the backing paper and place the adhesive on to the paper. Continue to remove the backing paper, smoothing down the Less Rigid Stick It®, until both are stuck together.

5. Carefully cut around the edge of the Less Rigid Stick It®.

6. From the paper side, fold back the tab along the length of one side.

7. Taking your scissors, snip away on a 45 degree angle a triangle for the top edge of the fold.

8. Apply double sided tape along the length of the folded tab on the paper side.

9. To act as a template for cutting, cut the following sizes of sturdy scrap cardboard:

• A strip measuring 1 x 5 cm with markers to measure a ‘U shape’

• A square measuring 5 cm x 5 cm with markers to measure a triangle

10. Draw around your chosen shape guide with a pencil, positioning uniformly or randomly on the paper.

11. To cut, you can either freehand around your drawn shapes guide or you can cut around your guide. Whichever method you use, ensure you use a cutting mat and have a safe and comfortable grip on the knife.

12. Gently fold back the cut sections to open the up.

13. Remove the red backing paper from the tape.

14. Carefully roll the clean cut side of the tree towards the tape, position this over the tab, and stick in place.

15. If there is a slight overhang at the bottom of your tree, trim this away.

15. Cut a 3cm pieces of double sided tape and position horizontally on the inside of the tree, as the base.

16. Find the end of the wire lights and stick the start of the plastic coated wire to secure the lights in place. You could also use the same method to attach the lights to the inside of the tree.

16.  Switch on your battery powered LED lights and place the tree over them to create a festive display.

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