3D Ceramic Tree Hack

CERAMIC TREES

I remember those from the early 80's. Yeah, I'm that old. I didn't have one but I always thought they were cute. And now I've discovered I can make one out of paper, and I can cover it with paper mache, air dry clay or cold porcelain clay to make it more durable.

PAPER TREES

So I ran across this SVG file on svgcuts.com that has a paper tree you can make on your Cricut machine. Let the machines do all the hard work for you! I don't use Cricut too much any more but you can cut these patterns out by hand if you don't have a machine. I can't say enough about this site. Mary is a paper genius and you will find lots of projects to make there if you're into paper crafting.

So I made my tree based on this pattern and made a few changes to mine so it would be a little more sturdy. I love to design but I couldn't come up with a better tree than this! Have a look around that site and you might just find more things you want to make. Remember, you can cut these out and score them by hand if you don't have a machine. This is how it looks with snow.

I made my base slightly bigger and rough textured my tree in tissue paper applied with water thinned white glue and a brush. I wanted a snowy texture on mine. You can also decorate the base the tree sits on any way you want. I used some heavy printed scrapbooking paper.

MAKING CHANGES

I made my tree out of heavy poster board and doubled and tripled up on the thickness of it because I knew I wanted to cover it with wet material and I didn't want it to collapse before it dried. I wanted the base to be substantial so I double and tripled up on it too and then poured Perfect Cast resin-plaster into it for weight.

All you have to buy to make this tree is the medium sized plastic bulbs, the candle and the card stock or poster board. And the SVG pattern is about ten bucks. You can omit the decorative holes if you are cutting it out by hand or covering it with other material.

It's a pricey project coming in about thirty bucks and for about the same price you could find a real ceramic tree on Amazon but you would definitely save money buying the bulbs and lights in bulk and by using the pattern to make several, if you're going to make more than one.

I didn't think it was sturdy enough for me just cut out of scrapbook paper. I almost talked myself into using a clay to shape the points into rounded and textured 'branches' just like the real ceramic trees have but I wanted to get it done sometime this year. Maybe with the next one!

I knew I wanted to heavily decorate mine because that had more appeal to me than just a plain colored tree. I did texture it, paint it, dry brush snow on it and add snowy glitter to the tips, add extra glitter and bling to it, hot glue the bulbs in, add weight to the base. But I thought it looked too busy and the bulbs are the main attraction. So pretty lit up!

Well, I finally decided to make the main color two shades of green, leave off the glitter and snow and not resin coat it. I also added a ridge to the base for the tree to sit on so it wouldn't slide off. And I'm pretty pleased with the way mine turned out. It's just as pretty as any ceramic tree I've ever seen. I love it!