Origami Christmas Tree Cards using ANY of the Christmas Designer Series Papers!

I always try to have a carry-around-able project for those times that I just cannot do another decluttering project or grade any more student papers and discussions.  Sometimes it is just nice to do “nothing” – but “nothing” makes my hands nervous…

So, I try to have little projects that I convince myself relate to the “Greater Good” of the To-do list that lurks.  This usually translates into fussy-cutting projects so that I have pieces ready to create cards when I need them.  But these origami Christmas Trees are another of these projects…as you may have noticed in an earlier post of mine! 

As we are getting closer to the wire, though, you may not have time.  Or you may want to have a little project that will help you with next year’s cards…yup…me too…

The cool thing is that you can use up all of your Christmas themed Designer Series Papers because these little trees are adorable no matter what color scheme you use.  Don’t believe me?  Scroll down and see just how carried away I got!

Here are the card measurements:

I first saw this in the October timeframe from a blog post that dated back to November 2008!  LeeAnn Greff over at Flowerbug’s Inkspot had published an outstanding set of instructions – and I figured that no one would be doing these this season.  Since then, guess what?  But I swear that I thought that I was bringing back a super design – and so did a lot of other folks this year…but I digress.

After cutting all of the pieces needed, I stamped the bottom of the Basic White card panel with the Season’s Greeting sentiment from the Stampin’ Up! Brightest Glow stamp set using Evening Evergreen ink.  Then I embossed the panel with the Merry Melody 3D embossing folder to add a rich texture. 

And while I love the Merry Melody embossing folder, you could also use the Stampin’ Up! Whimsical Trees as well.  Once embossed, I mounted the panel on the Gold Foil mat (with or without the snowflake die cut for the top of the tree!).  I glued the assembled mats on the card face.

I decided to do the inside panel at this point and used another sentiment from the Brightest Glow stamp set.  For this card, I decided to use gold heat embossing to carry the metallic theme inside.

Now for the origami tree.  Stick with me on this…the first time through feels tricky.  But once you do it, it is really a piece of cake!  Start with the largest square as those fold more easily than the smaller pieces do.

Fold on the diagonal, burnish, and open the piece. Fold on the opposite diagonal as the second picture shows, burnish, and reopen. The fold the piece in half.

Once you have formed the triangle, you need to take the top “V” on each side and fold it along the midline of the piece – like this:

These steps are repeated for the other three squares.  I will tell you that your hands get more of a workout with the smaller pieces.  But use your bone folder to help with those folds and then burnish them into place.  Because I did so many of them over the course of a few days, I laid them out on my desk and put a few heavy things on top of them…just to show those folds who the boss is!

With all four of the layers folded, I glued them together by tucking the point of the largest triangle into the “branches” of the next smaller one…and so on.

My completed tree was ready for the card face, along with some bling.  I used the Gilded Gems for many of my cards.  But if your supply drawer is like mine, you have a bunch of gold and silver embellishments – and they will all work.

This whole project got started when I saw LeeAnn’s instructions from back in 2008.  And then I thought about this gorgeous poinsettia Christmas tree that I had seen once in the Charlotte Airport as I was traveling a few years back.  That inspired this…

But then, why not do some gold and silver dotted trees? They are playful and sparkly:

And then I saw some of the black and gold foil paper in the Gold and Silver 6″ x 6″ DSP (now retired…but still in my stash!)…black and gold is VERY elegant. I experimented with the background on this one and heat embossed the panel for a vintage, worn sort of look.

And how about a green plaid tree (made out of the Regals 6″ x 6″ DSP) with fun red ornaments (using Red Rhinestone gems)?

And how about all of these?

Whew…I got a little carried away, I guess.  But really – how cute are these trees?  And how awesome is it to be able to put all of your leftover Christmas DSP to use?

I am hoping that you will think about giving this origami tree a try!  I think that you could make some beautiful trees with all of the traditional Christmassy paper – but then you could “branch” out into some of the nontraditional colors for those special people who just love their pinks, and purples, and blues…although I may be out on a “limb” with this…