DYD 2022 | Hybrid Home Decor: Paper Tree

Hello! I have a super simple and fun home decor craft to share with you - a paper holiday tree. Using strips of paper, straight pins, and a foam floral or craft tree, you can create something great to decorate your table, mantle, or anywhere you want to add a festive touch.

Here is what I created:



Here are the supplies I used:

• Foam floral tree base from my local craft store: The base for the tree
• Straight Pins: To secure the paper to the floral foam tree base
• Patterned paper: To decorate the tree, printed on my home printer from digital scrapbook kits
  • Cut into 3/4" wide by 4-1/4" long strips
  • Paislee Press December You Are My Fave No. 8 Pattern Papers
  • Sahin Designs Merry Maker Pattern Papers
  • Sahin Designs White Christmas Pattern Papers
• Adhesive: To create the loops from the paper strips and keep them securely adhered. I used a roller adhesive
• Glue gun: to create the cone at the top of the tree and adhere the final paper loops for a finished look and to adhere the star at the top of the tree
• Origami Five Pointed Paper Star: made out of patterned paper, there are many tutorials online showing how to create this star. Video tutorials are a great way to learn how to make these stars

Here is how I created the tree:

I printed out the patterned papers and cut them into 3/4" wide strips. I then cut each strip into 4.25" lengths (US letter paper is 8.5" wide so I just cut each strip in half to create 0.75" x 4.25" strips).
I used a floral foam tree because it was green. They also have white craft foam tree bases, but I chose the green in case there were any gaps in my paper spacing.


I put a bit of adhesive on the top of each paper strip and brought the bottom of the paper strip to meet the top and create the paper loops. I did this for all of my paper strips.


Starting at the bottom of my tree base, I attached the paper loops to the tree with straight pins. I did it this way so that I could move the strips around if needed. I tried to overlap the loops in each row so that they were staggered but this didn't always work out as I hoped.
*Tip: Embrace the imperfectness of the project!
*Tip: Use a thimble of some sort to push in the pins. Even though the straight pins are flat, it can start to really hurt your fingers pushing through the paper and into the tree base.


At the top, I created a paper cone to attach the last paper loops with hot glue (for a clean look/no straight pins) and covered it with 2 origami paper stars that I made. I adhered the origami stars to the cone with hot glue.
*Tip: Once you learn how to make the origami stars, you can make they very quickly. Make extras and you can use them to create a festive garland to decorate your walls or mantle. I have a lot of extra stars and will be sharing the garland that I am making in a TLP blog post soon!


Here is the finished paper tree, along side a festive holiday shadow box and framed word art, all using digital scrapbooking supplies. Creating holiday home decor is a great way to extend your scrapbooking stash and decorate your living space economically and personalized to your preferences. There are so many options for holiday papers and elements to choose from - check them out in The Lilypad Store - and I'd love to see what you create to deck your halls!