Handmade Christmas: Wooden wall tree.

Hello! How was your Thanksgiving? We had a great time relaxing and (over)eating with family. Now I'm ready to dive head first into Christmas. There's something about being in our first house and actually having the space to decorate that's giving me all sorts of ideas. I thought I would share a few with you over the next couple of weeks.

First up: an easy wooden wall tree! I plan to use mine to hang the Christmas cards that will be rolling in soon, but the tree could also be used to hang lights and ornaments, perhaps even in place of a bigger tree.

I didn't take any pictures of the process, but I'll explain what I did. I bought six thin pieces of balsa wood from the craft store and cut them into various sizes (you can buy a little razor saw in the wood section, but I just used my Exacto knife and a metal ruler to "saw" through the thin wood and it worked just fine). I then arranged them until I was happy with the look and glued everything together with a hot glue gun.

To make one of your own you'll need:
1 36" x 1/2" piece of balsa
3 24" x 3/8" pieces of balsa
2 24" x 1/4" pieces of balsa
Exacto knife
Metal ruler
Glue gun
Thumbtack/twine (to hang)

1. Cut your wood: Using your ruler and Exacto knife, cut two of your 24" x 3/8" pieces of balsa in half, forming four branches measuring 12" each. Cut the remaining 24" x 3/8" piece into thirds, forming three branches measuring 8" each. Cut one of your 24" x 1/4" pieces of balsa into 4" pieces, forming six branches. Take your second piece of 24" x 1/4" balsa and cut four more 4" branches. Use the remaining 8" of wood to cut four 2" branches. 2. Arrange: Lay your biggest piece of wood (36" x 1/2") out on the floor and arrange your branches coming off of it. Play around with it until you're happy with the results. 3. Glue: Use a glue gun to attach all the branches. You only need a little bit per branch! 4. Hang: Tie a piece of twine into a loop. Wrap twine around a push pin and stick the pin through the top of your tree. Hang and decorate!