This year, Roy has decided to do something a little bit different for his Christmas creations. I showed him his Grandma's old feather christmas tree, from the 1940s, and its tiny glass ornaments, and he was really taken with it. Unfortunately, although in the past the tree was regularly set up, it has become too delicate to be used each year, so Roy searched high and low for an alternative. He combined crafts from several of my old home hints books to create his own, miniature version of a feather tree to sit on a table top, and was so excited that he wanted to share his ideas with his friends. He also experimented with making mini Christmas decorations for his tree, which he will show you how to make next week.
The tree is made using pipe cleaners, which many of the children Roy knows assume are a modern invention. In fact, pipe cleaners were invented in the early 1900s to do exactly what the name suggests, clean pipes. They were cheaply and freely available when they were adapted for this activity and would have been a cheap alternative to buying a premade feather tree.
You Will Need:
- At least 21 long pipe cleaners. You can use whatever colour you like, but green, silver or white would be the most traditional.
- A small terracotta or plastic pot
- Sand, dirt or pebbles
- Glue
- Felt
- Small beads (Roy used multicoloured beads to look like lights)
- Scissors
- A skewer
Method:
- Take three of the pipe cleaners and loosely twist a length about 4 centimetres from the bottom together, as Roy has done in the photograph below. This will be the trunk of your tree. You will continue twisting the length of pipe cleaner above this original twist together around more pipe cleaners to make the trunk and boughs of your tree.
- Take another three pipe cleaners and slide them, as a single bundle, in between your original three pipe cleaners, above your twisted length. Twist the three 'trunk' pipe cleaners together above the boughs to hold them in place.
- Twist your trunk pipe cleaners together for a short distance (Roy did about 2 centimetres)
- Keep putting branches in and twisting the trunk around them until you have only about 3 centimetres left. This will be the top of the tree, for you to put your star on (which we will make next week). If you want a taller tree though, you can twist three new pipe cleaners into the original trunk and continue adding new layers of branches, as Roy and I did.
- Twist the last of the trunk pipe cleaners tightly together.
- Now, using your scissors, trim the ends of the branch pipe cleaners so that they look more like a classic Christmas tree shape. The top most branches will be the smallest, the bottom most will be the longest.
- Push a bead onto the tip of each branch. You might want to use a dab of glue to hold them in place but Roys fit quite snugly.
- If you are not using decorative pebbles, you might want to make a felt cover for the top of your pot. To do this, take your pot, and turn it upside down, on top of your piece of felt. Trace around the pot so that you have a template drawn on your felt the same size as the top of the pot.
- Cut the piece out of the felt and make a slit to the very centre of the piece of felt.
- Spread the loose trunk pipe cleaners out slightly, and put them into the pot.
- Fill the pot with dirt, pebbles or sand to hold the pipe cleaners in place. Roy used little white pebbles, so he decided not to cover them with the felt but . . .
- If you have dirt or sand to cover settle your piece of felt into the top of the pot to hide the sand or dirt.
- Finally, spread your branches out so that they look like a tree.
- If your tree is having trouble standing up, push a skewer into the pot and tie the trunk of your tree to it.If you have pieces of trunk pipe cleaner left over, use these to tie your tree onto the skewer.
- Come back next week and Roy will show you how to make tiny decorations for your tree.