How to Make Egg Carton Christmas Trees
Turn recycled egg cartons into the cutest little Christmas trees! This fun and festive craft is perfect for both kids and adults, and the finished trees make adorable decorations for the holidays.
Yield: 1 egg carton tree
Cost: $1
Materials
- Egg carton
- Acrylic paint
- Rhinestones (5mm)
- 2 Foam star sticker(s) (1 inch)
- Twig (3/4 inch long)
- Stick (3 inches long)
- Small wood slice (2 inch diameter)
Instructions
Step 1: Find what you need
- Gather your supplies and materials. You'll also need green acrylic paint, which we forgot to put in the picture.
Step 2: Cut and paint the tree pieces
- Use a craft knife to cut 3 "cone" shaped sections from an egg carton. These are the raised parts between the egg cups.(You can also use scissors, but we found this the easiest way to cut them out without misshaping them.)
- Then use scissors to cut off the flat base, so you're left with only the vertical straight sections. None of the egg cup portion should remain.Then cut up on an angle towards each "corner", removing a small triangle between each section.
- Repeat this around until you have 4 straight sections with "V" shaped gaps between each part.
- Then round off the bottom of each section so they look like flower petals.Repeat the whole process for the remaining 2 egg carton pieces.
- Paint each section with green acrylic paint. Paint part of the inside and the edges too, and allow to dry.
Step 3: Put the tree together
- Add hot glue to the top of one of the egg carton pieces. If you have 1 with a larger hole at the top, use this one now.
- Place another section on top of the glued section, rotating it so the "petals" go down between the first layer's "petals".
- Repeat, gluing the top section in place.
Step 4: Decorate the tree
- Add a small dot of hot glue where you'd like to add an "ornament".
- Set a rhinestone into the glue, pressing it flat onto the tree. Add more rhinestones to the same section of the tree.
- Repeat until your whole tree is full of ornaments. Try to space out the colours so they're not right next to each other.We placed 3 rhinestones on each top section and 2 on the 2 bottom tiers.
- For the tree topper you'll need a small twig and 2 glitter foam star stickers.
- Connect the star stickers to each other, so there are 2 good sides, and glue the star to the top of the twig.Then add glue to the bottom of the twig and stick it into the top of the tree.
Step 5: Add the tree to the base
- For the base of the tree cut a thicker stick to be about 3 inches long. Make sure at least one end is really flat so it will sit straight on the wood slice base.
- Add a small dot of hot glue to the center of the wood slice.
- Place the stick into the glue, holding it nice and straight until it stays on its own.
- Then add a generous amount of hot glue to the top of the tree trunk.
- Place the egg carton tree onto the "trunk", sliding it down and holding it so it sits straight while the glue dries.You may need to turn the tree upside-down so you can see the exact center of the egg carton, allowing you to push the trunk up farther.
- Your egg carton Christmas tree is complete!
- This craft is so easy to make and so adorable, you'll want to make a whole forest of Christmas trees made from egg cartons.You can use different colours of rhinestones or even different shades of green paint to personalize this tree craft.
Notes
Looking for more recycled crafts? Here's a few of our favourites:
DIY Robot Hand
Egg Carton Animal Portraits
Paper Roll Cat