Day 2 at Beccy's Place - B is for Bling

I'm playing along with the

Ninth Annual Month Of Holiday Cards

at

Beccy's Place

I'm not colouring at the moment but I am working on Christmas craft projects for creative little hands around our neighbourhood ... the endless months of Covid-19 lockdowns has brought our community much closer and I look forward to sharing more crafty adventures with them over the coming weekends and school holidays now that restrictions have eased.

Beccy's prompt for Day 2 is the letter "B"

(Beccy's post with "B" inspiration words and

beautiful bauble card to inspire is HERE)

My "B" kids Christmas activity kit is for a Bling Christmas Trees.

EVERYONE loves bling and we have sure have added a lot of sparkle to the world during 2020 and 2021, so I know making these Bling Christmas Trees will be popular ... the big challenge will be encouraging little hands from covering the tree shape completely with sparkle!

To make these trees / tree kits, I cut some heavy cardstock into 4 1/2" x 6" triangles for the tree base.  Paint the tree base green and set aside to dry.  (I left lots of bases unpainted because painting is always a fun activity.)  Place random dots of glue over the painted panel and decorate with assorted gems.  You can use adhesive gems instead if you don't want to have the risk of messy glue spills.

   

Can you see how I left an empty space at the bottom of the tree?  This is where the wooden peg is supposed to be, making the trunk of the tree (see link at end of this post).  When I cut the tree bases, I tested them with a peg trunk, ensuring that the tree would stand up and it seemed OK ... well, once I added the bling, things got a bit wonky and I could not get my tree to stand up.

Plan B was to try two pegs and yes, they worked.

Plan C was to add a brown cardstock "trunk" that would help the bling Christmas Tree stand, so I decided to try another tree and add an easel to the back (like the one I used for my Quilled Christmas Tree HERE).  It worked wonderfully too.

Here is the back view showing how the flat brown panel folds out.  It makes a sturdy 3D tree trunk that  stands the tree up and can easily be folded flat for storage.

 

Here are some of the pieces gathered together to assemble some activity kits.  I have a bag of adhesive gems on hand for when there is no time for waiting for the glue to dry or when it needs to be a mess-free activity.

~~~*~~~*~~~

Here is the cutting pattern I used to manually cut the triangle tree bases from a A4 sheet of heavy cardstock.  Of course the scraps have been put aside to use another day

*** INGREDIENTS ***

heavy cardstock

green paint

assorted gems and glue or adhesive gems

glue - for gems - Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Adhesive

wooden pegs - optional - for the tree trunk

Silhouette Cameo

Silhouette Design Store - Design ID #76159

Easel For Back Of Card by Lori Whitlock

glue - to adhere the trunk / easel in place

Helmar 450 Quick Dry or tacky glue

*** REFERENCE ***

This project was inspired by the "Jeweled Christmas Tree Craft for Kids"

project post on the "Housing A Forest" blog HERE