This year, I really needed a child-proof Christmas tree, so I had the idea of making one out of cardboard and mounting it on the wall.
Traditional free-standing Christmas trees are often unstable, and are particularly dangerous for children, who can end up toppling them over quite easily. They can also take up a lot of room and drop needles everywhere!
This design solves these problems by essentially having half a tree (with a regular tree, you can’t see the ‘back-bit’ anyway), and fixing it to the wall, providing stability. Being made of cardboard, it doesn’t have needles to drop, and it’s also fun to make! If I had more time (and cardboard), I’d like to make more of these and put them all around the room.
Making the tree
It was relatively simple to make, using pieces of cardboard cut from a large sturdy cardboard box. I drew up some plans using SketchUp, drawing out the pieces I needed and worked out how big I could make these to maximize the use of the available cardboard.
My tree ended up at approximately 60cm wide and 120cm tall, and it used the following pieces:
I painted the pieces appropriately, and fitted them together. The three half-tree pieces slot into the two semi-circular pieces, and then they are held together with two cable ties, each passing through the back piece and through all three half-tree pieces. The trunk/pot section is stuck onto the bottom of the back piece, and the whole thing can then be stuck on the wall (I used removable sticky pads for this to avoid ruining the wall).