the easiest christmas craft ever

Anyone else in the mood to start crafting their Christmas decor? Anyone else lacking extra wads of cash to spend on aforementioned Christmas decor? Well, today is your LUCKY DAY!!! Welcome to my first ever step-by-step DIY craft tutorial. And possibly last ever, too. We'll just see how it goes.

Yesterday, I was dying to get crafty. I'd done some crafting with my friend Friday night (photos of that still to come), and Saturday morning I woke up itching to get my craftiness on. And no, before Pinterest was invented, I had never woken up with that particular itch before. But that's beside the point, I think. Anyway, it just so happens that yesterday there was a home game in Athens, which meant that driving to a craft store was just not going to happen. I don't need ANYTHING badly enough to deal with that mess. So I was stuck at home, trying to think of something I could make with what I had on hand. And then it came to me. 

Why not make a Christmas tree out of sticks? I've seen lots of stick projects on Pinterest. I think I've even seen Christmas trees made out of sticks. But I couldn't find anything that quite suited my current mood. So I did what all crafty pioneers do: I made up my OWN project. And it was good. Feast your eyes!!

If you feel underwhelmed, it's only because you haven't made your own yet. But don't worry! In case you are completely lacking in brain function can't figure out how to make this, I have taken the liberty to create a step-by-step pictorial guide for your convenience! Possibly the only reason I did this was because yesterday I discovered Picnik, but that is also beside the point.

Here we go!

 Step 1: Find some sticks. This should be extremely easy, unless you live in a city or something, I guess. For me, this involved finding shoes (the longest part of the process), putting them on, and walking around the woods in my backyard for a few minutes. Challenging!


For extra artistic points, you will want to find sticks that don't all look the same (aka don't pull 10 sticks off the first dead tree you see). Different textures/barks/widths will make your project look more interesting.

Step 2: Break or cut your sticks so that they are all different lengths. Find a sturdier one to be your 'trunk.' 


Step 3: Arrange sticks so that it (duh) looks like a Christmas tree.


Step 4: Hot glue sticks onto the 'trunk.' I would definitely recommend doing this outside, since I was getting the long 'webs' of hot glue EVERYWHERE. I was very glad that I won't be vacuuming those things up for the next year. Also, the sticks are going to be crumbling and generally making a mess as you handle them. Better to keep mess outside.

Step 5: Cut and arrange some smaller twigs to make a star. No tree is complete without a star, right?? Hot glue the points of the star together. Then hot glue the star to the top of your tree.

Step 5b (not pictured): Hunt around your garage for a suitable pot to 'plant' the tree in. Then go get your rock bucket (where you collect all the rocks you find when you're tilling the ground in the summer to make gardens, of course) and get some small rocks. Fill up the pot with rocks and your tree's trunk, arranging rocks for maximum tree stability.

Don't have pots in your garage and/or a rock collection? A) What kind of person are you? B) You might have to figure out something else for display purposes. You could just lean the tree against a wall or shelf? Use string to hang it up? You decide!

Step 6: Enjoy your handiwork. Obviously.

Step 7 (optional): Spend the rest of the day congratulating yourself for your amazing creativity, your cost-effectiveness as a crafter, and your commitment to using locally sourced materials. Not that I did this or anything. You just might want to.

Total money required for project: $0 (cost of hot glue consumed is negligible).

Total time required for project: 1 hour, including picking all of the hot glue webs off the finished tree. (24 hours if you spend the rest of the day doing Step 7)

Total awesomeness of project: Infinity.