It has been so long since I have had a second to sit down and write a post. I have been so busy with birthday parties, Thanksgiving, getting ready for Christmas and Cub Scouts that I have had no time to sit down and unwind with my blog.
Well yesterday I was frantically trying to figure out how to make 16 center pieces for my Son's Cub Scouts holiday party (which is tonight) and get them all done for under $50...Actually the $50 is for the entire party. Yes you read that right, I was tasked with putting together a holiday party for 120+ people with a budget of $50, in fact the troop leaders exact words were "please stay as far under $50 as possible". I almost dropped my clipboard and ran out of church screaming. But with my head reeling I took down her specification...15 table cloths, 15 center pieces, cups plates and napkins for 120 people, games and prizes for the boys. The good thing is that I was given 3 weeks to complete the task and a volunteer assistant. That was all well and fine 3 weeks ago but the procrastinator in me decided to put the whole thing off until a couple days ago, which is when I found out that my assistant was moving over the weekend and there I was with this large task alone with only 3 days to pull it off. Challenge accepted!
In my panic I came up with a cheap solution to the centerpieces which was really the most difficult of the entire project. The boys have lots of energy (to put it nicely) and so they need a task to keep them busy while everyone arrives. To kill two birds with one stone I decided to make 12 Christmas trees out of green poster board They are basically big green cones. As the boys arrive and choose their tables they will have pompom,s glue sticks, and stickers to decorate their trees. Viola, now the boys are making the center pieces. Easy Peasy.
But that leaves me with the matter of the decoration to go on the food tables. I decided to go with the tree theme and create a "prettier" tree for the parents to look at. I remembered a craft I did when I worked in a cubical and we were decorating the office. I cant believe I hadn't thought of it earlier..it is so cheap and easy. The first time I made these trees I actually cut up a paper bag that was stashed under my desk and used scrap paper to make the tree. Cheap as free! This time I used dollar store poster board (cost .50) and 1/4 of a roll of dollar store wrapping paper, but you can really use anything you want.
I decided that I wanted the trees to be white because I think it will look really pretty on the red table cloths I bought.
Materials
Paper (any kind will due)
Card stock or poster board to make the cone
Glue
Like I mentioned before, the first time I did this craft I used a paper bag to make the cone. I honestly can't tell you the best way to make a cone. I kind of just rolled up the poster board until it was the size I wanted and tried to cut off the excess until it stood the way I wanted it to. When choosing paper get creative you can use newspaper, pages from a book (which I may do this weekend for our front room), colorful wrapping paper, anything.
Once you have wrestled the poster board (or card stock) into a cone just begin to rip the paper into small square pieces, the more rugged and frayed the edges are the better, plus as you rip the paper it will start to curl a little at the edges. If the paper doesn't curl, you may want to take the entire page of paper and roll it
up really tight so that it has a curling effect on the cone.
Now just take your pieces of paper and glue them one by one next to each other on the cone. Start from the bottom and work your way up creating over lapping layers. the messier it is the better.
Just make sure that when you start getting to the top you tear smaller pieces to fit.
That's all there is to it.
I made 3 trees of different sizes it took me about an hour and cost about $2...maybe less considering I only used a small amount of the dollar store wrapping paper that I already had left over from last year.
Happy Creating
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