Supplies:
- Poster board or Styrofoam triangle.
- Elmer’s glue
- Glitter or small beads
- Hot glue and hot glue gun
- Plastic brush to smooth out the Elmer’s glue
- Scissors
- String of some sort.
- Any additional décor items you may want
Start out by determining the size of your tree. I decided to make mine about 6 inches tall. Once you have your size, start at one of the corners of the poster board and mark 6 inches (or whatever size you decided to make yours) up on the poster board. Now take a piece of string and wrap one end around a pencil. Place the other end of the string on your mark you just made on the poster board. If the string is longer than you desired height of your tree, then just wrap any extra around your finger. Now make a half circle around your point with your pencil. The string will help make this even. Once you have your half circle made, cut it out.
I then curled my half circle to form my tree. You can determine how wide or skinny you want your tree to be depending on how tightly you roll your poster board. Once the tree is to your liking take your pencil and mark where the end of the poster board is. This area underneath does not need any glitter. I thought it would be easier to glue down the glitter when the tree was flat. So, once I marked the area that does not need glitter, I unrolled my tree.
I purchased what I thought was small long beads from Dollar Tree, but after opening them I found they were just pieces of glittery foil like material. I would not recommend using these for your own tree. They were a mess and did not stick well on my tree. These things may be better for other projects perhaps I will use them in future resin projects.
Apply a generous amount of glue all over the one half of your tree, the half that will be showing. Then use a plastic brush or something else to spread the glue evenly across the poster board. I also found with these glitter foil pieces I bought that it worked better to only work in small sections. The Elmer’s glue dries fast especially when it is spread thin. Then sprinkle your glitter or beads over the glue. Not all of the glitter or glue will stay on your poster board, so make sure to really cover your poster board well. Any extra that comes off after it is dry can be put back in its container to be used again, so do not worry about applying to much glitter to the glue areas.
apply extra glitter this is how much glitter I had stay on after I shook the extra off
Once the glitter is glued in place you can roll your tree back up. When I tried to do this my glitter pieces fell right off. These things were really a mess. I decided to use hot glue to glue the edge of my poster board together. Elmer’s glue may work for this as well, but with my glitter pieces falling off with every touch, I just wanted to glue my tree as quickly as possible and to insure it would not come apart on me. I then decided to attempt to reglue the glitter back on to my tree. I applied ample amount to glue over sections of my tree and sprinkled the glitter over the glue. I covered a good portion of the tree, but knew I needed to stop and let it dry before adding any more.
after I re-glued glitter back on
After allowing the Elmer’s glue overnight, the glitter still came off when touched. So, I decided to just spray paint the entire tree. I hoped the spray paint would help hold the glitter on a little better. The spray paint would also help cover up any gaps or holes where the white poster board was showing through. The spray paint did help some with keeping the glitter on the tree, but if it is touched to much it still comes off.
If I were to attempt to make a similar tree in the future, then I would spray paint the white poster board first. I would also use a different type of glitter. Lastly, I would apply the glue and glitter in small sections at a time instead of all at once.
