Magazine Christmas Trees!



Martha Stewart                                   



Last year, I discovered this wonderful craft while watching The Martha Stewart Show and I became addicted to making these magazine trees! Once you start you wont want to stop. They are so unbelievably easy to make because they are so self contained; All you really need is one magazine per tree plus some spray paint if you want to embellish it (but the trees even look cool unpainted!). This is one of the most satisfing craft projects I've ever done and they look so great when finished! There is a great video of the process from the Martha Stewart website; I encourage you all to watch, here. But here are some photos of my process.




1st fold: fold top left corner over to the edge, making a point at the top.
(It's like making a paper airplane).

 


2nd fold: fold newly folded edge over to the seam, keeping a sharp point at the top.
(Again, very much like the wing of a paper airplane!)

 


3rd fold: fold over (and tuck in) the little triangles that are hanging down
so that the bottom is flat.

 

Here is my finished product!



Some tips for those of you who give this a try:

• Magazines with staple binding wont work; they must be the kind with glue (Good Housekeeping, not Time). Plus, you must thoroughly bend ("brake in") the binding so the tree will fan out front cover to back cover.
• The more pages the magazine has, the fuller and better the tree will look.
• Make sure each fold is really clean and uniform so that the top of the tree is nicely pointed.
• To make a little forest of trees, it's nice to find magazines that are different sizes. I use a free apartment hunting magazine (which can be found near the exit of any grocery store) for a smaller tree.
• At first I was skeptical of the spray paint, I thought the magazine would get wet and fall apart, but it worked really well. I recommend green or gold paint, but definitely try different colors/shades to match your style. To add glitter, I just sprinkled it on while the paint was still wet but a spray adhesive + glitter would also work well.