I believe the girls learned to make coffee filter Christmas trees in elementary school.
They are super easy to make and the ones we made this year turned out really good.
To make a coffee filter Christmas tree you need:
- coffee filters
- scissors
- glue, a hot glue gun works best
- a Styrofoam cone or a paper cone (there are tons of tutorials online that show you how to make a cone shape from heavy paper-just give it a google)
- decorations for the tree (optional-they look pretty nice without anything on them)
Cut the coffee filter into strips. You can make your strips wide or narrow in width depending on what look you prefer. Be sure to cut around the circle shape of the filter. Once you’ve cut your strips you should be left with a flat circle of filter.
Starting at the bottom of the tree begin gluing the strips around the base of the cone. Depending on the size of your cone, you may need to use more than one filter to make it all the way around.
Continue gluing the strips of filter all the way up the cone overlapping the previous one until you reach the top. Sort of like adding ruffles onto a skirt.
Remember the circle piece of filter left from cutting the strips? Use a portion of that to cover the top of your cone. Cones with a very sharp point won’t need to be covered at all.
I found a pinecone from the yard for a topper on one tree. On another I used an old sprig of fake holly.
You can add string or ribbon to give the tree a roped look.
If you’d like to color the tree use watercolor paints or make a watercolor of sorts by mixing water and food coloring. Gently paint the color on. Alternately, you can color the filters before you ever cut them.
Mix a little coffee with water to paint on the filter edges for an antique look.
Coffee filter Christmas trees are a fun, easy, and inexpensive craft to make with the end product looking like something you’d find in a fancy Christmas store.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
My wife loved to decorate for Christmas. She always hoped to get money for Christmas so she could go out the day after and buy decorations at a marked discount. She also made many of the decorations she displayed. If she had been here to see today’s post, she would be trying as we speak to repeat the process.
I celebrate Christ’s birth every day of the year so don’t pay much mind to Dec 25. I don’t have any decorations out at my house. I don’t need flashing lights and bright colors to remind me that Christ was born to be my Savior! Should I repeat that? Born to be my Savior! Not the World’s Savior but mine! And yours if you want him to be.
Tipper,
You and your girls make some of the prettiest things. Who would’ve thought of coffee filters?
Me and Harold use to go fishing in Piercy Creek in the spring and Summertime and we would spot a beautiful Christmas Tree. We’d go back sometime after Thanksgiving and dig-up that Sucker or someone else would have it. We traveled about 3 miles thru the woods to get to it. Monte Kit and some of his brothers went with us. We were all over those Mountains so we knew many short-cuts. To follow the highways to get to Piercy, you had to travel about 20 miles, then wade the Nantahala River, and walk a long ways above the Falls, to get to the Speckled Trout. We’d take a baccer can of worms in ole Prince Albert cans in our back pocket, to get us some Specks. That was a lot of fun then, but today I couldn’t make it up Mule’s Face. …Ken
From “chromatography” strips, to clothespin doll skirts, to chrysanthemums (and many other flowers) to Christmas trees – Coffee filters sure are versatile!! Why, they can even be used to filter the ingredients in your “party perk” making Friendship Tea or Christmas Punch – – and we thought they were just for making coffee!!
That sounds easy enough. You always have so many lovely Christmas decorations and small trees of one kind and another that you have made. I always find it amazing….and lovely!