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Tree-Trimming on a Budget
Are your holiday decorating clients scaling back their spending? Do you ever get asked to decorate a tree for a charity, church or other organization at no charge?
If so, check out these affordable tree decorating ideas, which, with a little ingenuity, transform common and leftover items into custom ornaments.
- Give plain glass ball ornaments a marbleized finish. Fill a shallow pan with water, and spray floral paint onto the surface of the water. Dip the ornaments into the water, one at a time, and let them catch “strands” of paint as they are removed. Hang ornaments to dry.
- Roll paper doilies into a cone shape, staple or glue them, and fill them with scraps of permanent or dried flowers. Weave a narrow ribbon through the open weave in the lacy edge to create a tie with which to hang these Victorian-inspired decorations.
- Turn pine cones into ornaments by hot-gluing the center of a length of 1/8-inch-wide ribbon to the flat bottom of a large pine cone, then hot-gluing scrap dried or permanent flower heads, leaves or grasses over the spot where the ribbon is attached to the cone. Tie the ends of the ribbon into a simple shoestring bow, and hang the pine cone upside-down from the tree.
Here are some ideas to add volume to a spindly tree.
- Stuff clusters of baby’s breath, grains or grasses, either dried or fresh, among the branches
- Place old or inexpensive sprays or bushes of permanent flowers or foliages (try a variegated vine, like ivy, or variegated holly), among the branches.
- Fill spaces in the tree with “tufts” made from 18-inch-square pieces of tissue paper or mylar.
- Artfully drape fabric or tulle throughout the tree.
- Add permanent or fresh evergreen garland among the branches.
- Position birch branches vertically and slightly angled among the topmost branches of a tree to increase its height. Also place birch branches throughout the tree to increase it fullness and diameter.
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