Fold Yourself a Forest

While these little trees won’t scent your home with pine, they can certainly satisfy your early holiday decorating itch.  This project is easy enough for a child to do and would be a great family activity.

The more people folding the faster your forest grows!

Don’t feel constrained by this project’s directions.  Once you’ve made a couple of trees then experiment.  Try a variety of papers or go crazy with glitter.  Maybe cut out your paper circles with decorative scissors or try varying the size and number of your paper circles.

This paper craft project can be found in a great new book:  Martha Stewarts’s Handmade Holiday Crafts or on Martha’s website. 

Materials needed: scissors or circle cutter, paper, bone folder, 12 inch skewers or lollipop sticks, wooden spools, beads that fit onto the skewers, and hot-glue gun or fast drying glue.

Note: The instructions found in the book and the website are missing a step.

 Make 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 inch-diameter paper circles.  For smaller trees eliminate either the 6 or 2-inch circle.

Fold each circle in half 4 times.  It is helpful to use a bone folder to make your folds defined.  

     You have just created 8 sections.  Think of the creases as your mountains.

     

     Now you want to create the valley creases.  Turn your circle over and make another 4 folds in the middle of each of the 8 sections.  Make sure your mountain creases line up as your create you valley creases.  Now you should have 16 sections.

      Snip off the center tip of each circle, creating a very small hole for your skewer.

           Glue a small bead at the top of a skewer and then place the smallest circle next to the bead.  With a hot glue gun or fast drying glue dab a small amount of glue to the underside of the circle, where paper and skewer meet.  Make sure the skewer is centered in the middle of the circle and carefully let the glue dry.

     Working one at a time from smallest circle to largest, slide the remaining circles onto the skewer and secure each layer with glue.   Insert bottom of skewer into a spool and mark the desired height on the skewer.  Remove and cut skewer, then return skewer to spool and secure with glue.