DIY Modern Tabletop Christmas Trees
Christmas decorations don’t need to be elaborate, fancy, or expensive to bring a decided festive feeling into your home. These modern DIY tabletop Christmas trees are a perfect example of simple holiday décor. Made out of paper mache cones, they are perfectly imperfect. Enjoy!
View in gallery
View in gallery
Materials you’ll need for Tabletop Christmas Tree:
- Papermache cones (found at your local craft store, in the doll or cardboard box sections)
- Drill + 2 sizes drill bits
- Sandpaper
- Spray paint
- LED tea lights
How to make the Tabletop Christmas Trees:
View in gallery
Step 1: Drilling process
Begin with your larger drill bit. Carefully supporting the cone from the inside (but with fingers out of the way of the drill bit), drill holes into your cone. Recognize that this isn’t wood, so your holes aren’t going to look perfect. In fact, they’re going to be pretty rough at this point.
View in gallery
Space the holes randomly apart. You may want to make the spacing denser near the bottoms of your trees, but it’s a preference call on your part.
View in gallery
Repeat this process, with the larger drill bit, on all your cones. Tip: When you’re drilling, use the drill-in (clockwise) direction for entering the cardboard, and use the drill-out (counter-clockwise) direction, while scraping the sides of the hole a bit, for exiting the cardboard.
View in gallery
Switch to your smaller drill bit, and add lots of holes throughout your paper mache cone. Again, you may want denser spacing near the bottom of your cone. With this smaller drill bit, I recommend going up higher on the tree than with the larger drill bit.
View in gallery
Step 2: Sandpaper
Use a sanding block to carefully sand away chunks around the holes.
View in gallery
With a medium-grit scrap of sandpaper, wrap a pen with sandpaper.
View in gallery
Insert the sandpaper-wrapped pen into the larger holes, and scrape the edges. Rotate the sandpaper pen, and also jiggle it in and out of the hole to smooth the hole edges as much as possible.
View in gallery
This process helps a lot. Here is a photo of what the holes look like before they’re sanded.
View in gallery
Here’s what the larger holes look like after sanding. Not perfect, but better.
View in gallery
For the smaller holes, you could roll the sandpaper into itself and insert it into the holes. I found it easiest, though, to just use a sharp pencil to push in the cardboard chunks into the hole itself.
View in gallery
Repeat for all the trees. At this point, you’ll likely be wishing you had chosen a smaller number of trees. But it’ll be worth it!
View in gallery
Step 3: Spray painting process
Set all the trees in a well-ventilated area on a dropcloth. If you’re painting different colors, separate the trees according to their color.
View in gallery
The first few trees will be painted with a flat white spray paint.
View in gallery
Spray light coats of spray paint onto your paper mache cone trees, working your way all the way around each tree.
View in gallery
Take care to not spray too much in one coating, or it will drip.
View in gallery
Repeat the steps for other colors on the other Christmas tree cones.
View in gallery
Let sit for 5-10 minutes, then repeat coats. Do two or three coats, then let the cones dry completely.
View in gallery
Step 4: LED teal lights
Take out your LED tea lights, and turn them on. Set them on a tabletop or wherever you are going to display your modern DIY tabletop Christmas trees.
View in gallery
Set the paper mache cones on top of the tea lights.
View in gallery
What a lovely little cluster of joy, don’t you think?
View in gallery
Originally, my plan was to cut red tissue paper out for the green trees.
View in gallery
I tried covering the tea light with the red tissue paper, but when I placed the tree on top of the LED light, it looked pretty much the same as it looked with just the light itself…only darker. So, there’s a tip for you: Colored “lights” in your Christmas tree cone might not work well.
View in gallery
Either way, I love the forest created here. Festive yet serene.
View in gallery
I hope you love creating your own little Christmas wonderland with these DIY modern tabletop trees. Happy DIYing!