No one will ever guess that these trees are made from Dollar Tree foam board, wrapping paper and BBQ skewers! Anyone who steps foot in your house and sees these will thing they are some high end wood trees you picked up at a fancy boutique! This is crafting on a budget at it’s finest!
Remember to click on the link at the bottom of this page to watch the full video tutorial!
Here is all you’ll need for this DIY craft.
- Foam Board, Dollar Tree
- Wrapping paper, Dollar Tree
- BBQ skewers, Dollar Tree
- Raffia, Dollar Tree
- Wood beads, (optional)
- Wood disks or any wood base
- Black paint or Sharpie
- Brown Paint, Craft Smart Brown from Michael’s
- Mod Podge, Dollar Tree
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
- Sanding block
- drill
- Razor knife
- ruler
The first thing you will do is use your ruler to draw out a 12 inch tall by 6 inch wide triangle onto your foam board.
Use the straight edge of your ruler and your razor knife to cut out your triangle. You can use black or white foam board for this.
Use your black paint or Sharpie to color in the white edges of your foam board.
You will trace your foam board cut out onto your wrapping paper two times. Cut out your wrapping paper triangle. I folded my wrapping paper in half to cut two out at one time. You can also use scrapbook paper for this.
You will now Mod Podge it to your foam board. Since it is a large surface and paper tends to absorb the Mod Podge and dries fast, I found it worked best to mod Podge in sections.
Once your Mod Podge has dried you can use your sanding block to sand the surface and edges of your tree to give it a warn rustic wood look.
It’s time to add your tree trunk. A BBQ skewer works perfectly for this. I wanted mine to be a little darker then the natural wood color so I used a rag and wiped a little brown paint onto my skewer until I got the color I wanted.
To do this you will lay your triangle flat on your table, line your pointy end of your skewer up with the center of the bottom of your triangle. You will simply push your skewer into the foam board about 1 1/2 inches, be very careful not to push through the sides of your triangle.
You can leave your skewer the full length or cut it down to any height you like. I made one full length and trimmed two others down to have three different heights.
I added some wood beads to some of mine. I used natural wood beads from the craft store. You could soak the Dollar Tree colored wood beads in nail polish remover and use a rag to rub off the paint, repeating those steps a couple times. I just used hot glue to hold them in place.
For a base I use wood disks that I had gotten from Hobby Lobby, but you can use any wood base or scrap wood you have. I drilled a small hole and hot glued the bottom of the skewer into the hole. The drill bit that I used was a 5/32 size. The size you use will depend on where you get your skewers from.
To finish off my trees I tied a bow with some raffia and hot glued it to the bottom of the tree.
Your tree is now complete! You can stop at making one or make a few to cluster them like I did. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! To see more DIY crafts of mine, visit my Facebook page by clicking here. Remember to click on the Follow button while your there. You can watch the full video tutorial by clicking here.
