As a scrapbooker, it’s practically a must to create at least some of your own holiday decor. Creating your own decorations is a great way to use up some of that must have stash you’ve been hoarding, and it’s inexpensive enough that you can adapt it or switch it out for other items each year, without breaking the bank.

Let’s start with my personal favorite: the Christmas tree.

These started out as plain styrofoam cones, with small styrofoam balls as toppers. You can find them in the floral section of any craft store. You’ll also need some short ball head pins, an adhesive sealer like mod podge, and some paint and inexpensive brushes. A glue gun or dimensional adhesive like diamond glaze or glossy accents is also helpful. Oh, and don’t forget paper and buttons!

This tree was made using scraps of paper, torn into pieces, and then misted with a walnut ink to darken them up a bit. They were VERY pink to begin with. (I don’t know if you know this, but I’m not a huge fan of pink. Small doses of pink are nice. Not so much on my holiday decor. I prefer a more traditional color scheme.)

I then used an inexpensive brush and coated the back of each scrap with antique gold mod podge, adhered it to the cone, and added another layer of mod podge on top of the scrap. I repeated that with the rest of the scraps, trying to keep a good variety of colors next to each other, and not repeating colors on adjoining scraps.

For the button tree, my youngest and I just filled in the space as tightly as we could with buttons that we adhered with small ball head pins. You don’t want them to be too long, because then they’ll poke out the other side. (Owie!) As you can see, there are spots where the foam shows between buttons. That doesn’t bother me, but if it bothers you, try covering your cone with paint first.

For this tree, cut a whole bunch of paper strips about half an inch wide by four inches. Fold it in half without creasing, and pin it onto the cone. Start on the bottom, and work you way up, making sure the end of each piece hides the pins for the lower strips. When you get to the top, if you have any extra length, just trim it off.

All of these trees were then finished off with a styrofoam ball painted with silver acrylic paint, and hot glued onto the top of the cone.

Do you have any simple trees you’d like to share? Link them up in the comments below!