O Christmas Tree

That’s right! We went there—decorated a full sized Christmas tree with beautiful ornaments made of paper!

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, how lovely are your…paper ornament decorated branches!

Every year, the South Towne Exposition Center in Sandy, Utah hosts The Festival of Trees, where hundreds of uniquely decorated trees, wreaths, and ginger bread houses are donated and put on display after having been sold during a closed auction. The best part is that every cent raised goes towards “A Gift of Love” to benefit children at Primary Children’s Hospital.

With some help from our Consultants, Close To My Heart decorated a tree with some pretty stunning handmade paper ornaments and donated it to this generous event.

We want to publicly thank all of those who participated in making this gorgeous tree a reality and encourage all of you out there to continue making beautiful, inspiring things!

And since we are now in full holiday crafting mode, we’ve also assembled a handful of mini 18″ trees festooned with papercrafted ornaments for even more inspiration! These trees are the perfect size to display anywhere in your home, at work, or even to give as a gift.

For starters, let any doubts that you may have about making your own paper ornaments disappear. These little ornaments in particular are especially easy to replicate. With a little help from Cricut®shapes and ready-made complements, you can have one of these trees done in no time!

Round ornaments are a must-have classic. We cut several circles using our Cricut® (some 1″, some 1¼”) to make the ones you see here. The 3-D circles are four of these circles (all of the same size) folded down the middle then glued to each other. Before gluing the last piece, completing the sphere, add a loop of twine or ribbon to later hang it from the tree. The hearts, snowflakes, reindeer, even the “MERRY CHRISTMAS” garland, are all Cricut® shapes.

Above, we ink embossed some circles with a dainty heart and sewed a bunch of other circles together to create a colorful garland.

Here’s another take on using Cricut® shapes to decorate your tree:

One of the great things about all of these Cricut® shapes is that you can make them any size you want—even large enough to decorate a full sized tree if you’d like!

This next tree uses both Cricut® shapes and die-cuts:

Sometimes you just have to think outside the box, or kit. Do you recognize these gold glitter bows? They came from our Cut Above® Merry Everything Tag Kit. And the red glitter ornaments? We used some of the Thin Cuts from the Christmas Paper Doll bundle!

Our Complements also make for some great (and easy!) mini ornaments!

The topper, “Merry Christmas,” and red glitter poinsettia shapes all came from our Silver & Gold and Beary Christmas Complements. Easy peasy!

Once again, we thank everyone that participated in creating our beautiful tree that was donated to the Festival of Trees—we hope all of our local readers will be able to attend—and we wish you the merriest of crafting as you create your holiday magic!

To get your supplies to make your very own ornaments visit my website.

Happy crafting,

XOXO- Shauna