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| Don't miss the tutorial to make one of these lovely trees at the bottom of this post! |
This Christmas season has gotten off to a roaring start! Last Friday we made it to two of the three parties we had scheduled (!) - I guess everyone is trying to get their parties over and done early. I was put in charge of decorations for our church Christmas party that we had that evening. Luckily I didn't have to do it alone- my friend Becca and I decided we make a great creative team despite a budget that did not support our
delusions visions of grandeur and working with seating for 220 in a small gym.
The seating arrangements were tough. Our church has a few long rectangular tables, but mostly round tables, and not enough to seat everyone, so we ended up borrowing rectangular tables. We arranged two long rows of the rectangular tables, banquet style, and filled the rest of the gym with round tables. I think almost every seat ended up being filled. It was cozy- that's for sure!
To keep our costs down, we made a lot of the decorations ourselves, and used things we already had. For example, we folded dozens of green origami trees- with the help of friends and family, thankfully! I bought about $3.00 worth of green butcher paper, measured and cut it into different sized squares, and went to town using an origami pattern my mom shared with me. I think in total we folded about 20 trees and made several coffee filter wreaths (a big thanks to Marissa, Cara, Becca and Lindsey who all accepted jobs in my Christmas sweatshop). Aside from the tablecloths, I believe we spent between $10-$15 for the whole thing.
Becca folded probably dozens of silver and gold stars too, which we taped to the accordion doors behind one of the buffet lines.
On the wall behind the buffet tables on the other side of the room, we hung strands of white Christmas lights, 6 wreaths and a few large silver doilies. Down the long walls on either side were hung small white doilies (as snowflakes), and we hung a few wreaths on the doors.
The tables were covered in red, white, and green tablecloths, and some of them had a contrasting color of tissue paper or napkin in the center. As centerpieces for the round tables, we used our lovely origami trees and mason jars with assortments of pine cones, Epsom salt, fake red berries, electric tea lights, and jute/ tulle tied around them.
On the banquet tables we put "bouquets" of fresh greenery tied with ribbon, laid end to end and with pine cones and electric tea lights here and there. We also used a few of the origami trees and some book trees, and long cinnamon sticks tied with ribbon. Each table was a little different.
I am lucky enough to have fresh fir tree branches at my disposal- for free! My family lives on a Christmas tree farm and my mom sent me loads of heavenly- smelling greenery by way of Marissa who drove out for Thanksgiving. (Thanks Mom and Marissa)!
As a decoration for the food table, we used a large vase and arranged silver and gold spray painted branches inside, with a few glass ball ornaments hanging.
The dessert tables had large tree boughs around the backs, and tomato cage trees. We put two more tomato cage trees along one of the side walls. Thank you Pinterest for that idea!
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| Three of our wreaths; the one on the left is a coffee filter wreath and the one on the right is a book page wreath. |
I think it all turned out beautifully and we had so much fun! (PS- Thank you Becca for taking most of the above photos!) Now, on to the origami tree tutorial. My disclaimer: I am not an origami pro, and I really don't know all the technical names for folds. My folding isn't perfect, and after a while, I'm not so much of a perfectionist anymore! My only recommendation is to make a sharp crease when folding- use the back of your nail, and try to line up corners evenly as best you can; other than that- it is what it is! These are not difficult folds once you get the hang of them, but it can be time consuming if you want to make multiple trees, since you will probably need to fold 4 separate papers for each tree.
Origami Trees
These are not difficult folds once you get the hang of them, but it can
be time consuming if you want to make multiple trees, since you will
probably need to fold 4 separate papers for each tree.
You can make this tree on a really large scale, or a very small scale, and it looks great either way. If you want to make 10" trees (approximate measurement) like I did for the Christmas party centerpieces, you will need square papers of the following sizes: 12", 10.5", 9", 7.5". Or, if you want to customize your tree size for your own needs, a good rule of thumb is that each paper size should decrease by about 1/8.
Let's start with the "Stacking Tree Bases" for lack of a better term. You will make three of these in total, in descending size.
1. Start with your square paper. You actually want to turn it so the pattern is facing down before step 2.
2. Fold the paper in half diagonally (bottom to top) to make a triangle- pattern facing out.
3. Open up the paper.
4. Fold in half diagonally again, the other way (right to left), so that the folds look like an X shape.
5. Orient the paper so the triangle point is facing downward. Put your finger next to the crease to hold the left side in place, and with your other hand, separate the layers of the right side.
6. Pull the right corner down on top of the bottom corner.
7. Give the folds a nice sharp crease. You should have a square on top of the triangle now.
8. Fold the left side of the square up diagonally on top of itself.
9. Repeat the same fold from step 5- separate the layers of the left corner a bit. Use your other hand to stabilize the bottom corner while you do this.
10. Fold the left corner of the original triangle down to the bottom point.
11. Crease the folds sharply.
12. Fold the triangle flap from step 8 back over to the left.
13. Fold diagonally so the the bottom corner of the square matches up with the top corner. Fold the top layer of right side of the square over diagonally to the left corner. Fold so the bottom corner matches up with the top corner again. Repeat until all the squares are folded diagonally (bottom to top).
14. You should have a triangular shape that looks like this.
15. Take the top corner that you just folded and pinch it together, then start pulling it down towards the left corner.
16. Line up the corners and pinch in place. Grab the right corner and fold it over so that it matches up with the left corner, and the top corner is folded down and sandwiched inside. Press together, making sure to crease the folds on the paper sandwiched inside. This picture shows what it looks like when you open it back up a bit.
17. Repeat steps 15 and 16 on the next 3 sides.
18. After you have done this for each of the 4 sides, it should look like this. You are now done with the base of the tree- you need to make 2 more just like this with the smaller pieces of paper.
On to the "Tree Topper"!
Use the smallest paper for the topper.
1. Start with the same square you made for the Stacking Tree Bases (steps 1-12).
2. Grab the top layer from the right corner, separating the two layers, and hold it straight up at a 90* angle.
3. While stabilizing the bottom corners, push the center fold straight down so it lines up with the folds below.
4. Crease the folds sharply.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 on each of the 4 sides. so you end up with a kite shape like this.
6. Fold the top layer of the right side over to the left, so the kite shape is closed like this. You should apply glue on the patterned area of the paper that is shown in step 5, and then do this fold.
Put it all together!
1. Take your bottom base piece and turn it over- this is what the bottom looks like.
2. Pull the pieces slightly apart and apply glue, then squish it all together so all 4 corners are touching in the middle.
3. For the next two stacking base pieces, you want to put the glue far away from the corners that meet in the middle, so that it holds its shape, but still has room to fit over the top of the other pieces.
4. Here's what it looks like from the top.
5. Place a dot of glue (I used hot glue) on the top point.
6. Quickly stack the next biggest piece on top, making sure the glue holds it in place. Repeat for the next two layers.
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| Tree with three layers- you really could be done here if you wanted. |
Here's the finished tree!
As always, if you have questions (or if you liked the tutorial), leave a comment below or email me at rochelle@homesweethomebodies and I will do my best to answer your question. Happy folding!
