Book Page Tree

Yesterday I promised a tutorial on the Book Page Tree I made for the master bedroom.

If you missed the post here's what the tree looks like.

I placed mine in an urn but it looks just as pretty without it.

For the topper I added a little silver to give it some sparkle.  The addition of jingle bells was a fun touch also.

Shall we get started on the tutorial?  

You'll need. . . 

a cone shaped base

an urn - optional

four inch squares cut or torn from a book

glue gun and lots of glue sticks

a pencil

tinsels pipe cleaners

scrapbook paper

wood star shape

silver glitter

decorative scissors or circle punch

jingle bells

The first step is to make a base for the tree.  I used a large piece of poster board but I would think a foam cone form would work also.

To make the base from poster board I started by curving the bottom of the poster board.  To do this I simply cut a slight curve along the whole bottom edge of the poster board.  Trying to make it as even as possible but it doesn't have to be perfect.

I then rolled the poster board until I had a size that would fit into the opening of the urn I was planning to use - - plus two inch in which to overlap the edges to be glued together.  Trim off any access and then glue along the seam to form the cone.

You can see below I then used a pencil to make a guide on the cone itself so I would know where to stop placing book pages once I started gluing them on.  This turned out to be a very helpful step.

The next thing you will need to do is start cutting or ripping your book pages into four inch squares.  If you think you have enough -  make a few more, you'll probably need them.  LOL.

Now comes the fun part -- gluing on the squares of book pages.

Take one cut square and place the eraser end of a pencil into the middle.  Then simple crumple the square up and around the base of the pencil.

Here is another view of how it should look.

While holding the square on the pencil with one hand, add glue to the tip with the other hand and then press and hold unto your cone form until the glue firms up.  I did find that slipping my free hand inside the cone form to press outward helped speed things along and made things much more manageable as the tree started to fill up.  Continue to glue on pages, spacing them a half inch or so apart until you have the whole base covered.  As the tree fills up don't be afraid to lay the tree down on it's side while your preparing a new square to be glued one.  It makes slipping your hand inside much easier and it didn't seem to damage the pages already glued on.

Continue gluing squares on until your almost to the top.  You can see below that the middle section is not filled in, yet I have glued squares on almost all the way to the edge of the form board.  You'll want to stop here and make your topper.

For the topper make a simple medallion from book pages.  Next cut a single tinsel pipe cleaner into three even sections.  You'll need eight cut pieces in all.

Bend the cut pine cleaner into a petal shape, then twist the ends together a couple times to hold it together.  Pinch the top of the petal to form a point.  Adjust if you think it needs it.  Once all your petals are formed glue them to the medallion. 

Take a small piece of scrapbook paper and either punch out or cut a circle shape out with decorative scissors.

Next glitter a wood star shape and glue it onto the scrapbook circle.

Then glue the whole thing on top of your tinsel pipe cleaner petals on the medallion.   You now have a tree topper.

Moving back to the book tree, place the decorated medallion on the top of the tree.  Play around with it until it looks nice then glue it in place.

You may need to add a few more squares at the base of the topper to give the tree a nice full look like below.  I think I added four squares after the topper was glued on.  Trim the points off the squares if they seem too long.  Just keep adding until your happy with the look.

The last step is to add some jingle bells.  Simply glue them onto the "branches" in a random way until you like the look.

After placing your finished tree in the container you'll be using, your done and should have something like this!

Fun right?

Happy crafting,

Robin

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