3013, a personal journal in numbers: Paper Trees on Great Day St. Louis

Tomorrow morning I will be back on Great Day St. Louis (and if you are visiting from Great Day, "Welcome!") sharing the "how-to" for making book page Christmas trees. The display will include all my book page crafts from this season and I'm really looking forward to sharing each of them with you.

If you'd like the tutorial for making this tree read on below after the jump or head over to Young and Crafty to check out the tutorial that I shared last week.

Here is a tutorial for making a decorative Christmas tree from a foam cone tree and book pages. I love to make crafts from things I have around the house; I so thoroughly enjoy seeing something cute and festive come from very little to start with!

First, you will need a foam cone and an old book as well as adhesive, a leaf shape stencil, some metal florist wire, and a hot glue gun. You will need to cut A LOT of leaves from your book pages to cover the cone. I'm not sure exactly how many you need, I just made the leaves as I went.

After cutting the leaves, you will need to cut pieces of the florist wire a little shorter than the length of the leaves. Then, cover the back of one leaf with your adhesive, place the florist wire in the center, and cover with another leaf. Smooth the two pieces together with your fingers. If the two leaves are not exactly the same size, trim the edges. The key piece here is the florist wire because after attaching the leaves to the foam "tree", you can bend your leaves so that they flare out rather than just lie flat.

Lastly, starting from the bottom of your foam cone, use your hot glue gun to attach the leaves. Go around, overlapping the leaves a little when you begin each new layer until your reach the top. I let the top layer of leaves extend a little above the top of the cone and I covered the exposed foam top with a circle of book paper.

That's it! While this craft takes a little time, it is super easy and I love the final result. I'm a sucker for print; so, I just love how this tree adds to my holiday decor.