On becoming a paper Queen, holiday project #2

I spent yesterday driving south to Seattle.  It was a day planned to do a bit of shopping with my daughter.  We had a great day of shopping, walking, coffee and dinner.  University Village was at the top of the list for shopping spots.  While there we stopped in one of my favorite stores... Anthropologie.  They have such an interesting mix of items.  A couple of holiday items caught my eye.

First up was this tree.  Made of paper, sheet music actually, with bits of foam core layered between each sheet.  A little bauble on top... all for $48.00, yep, that's right.  I thought, hmmmm, perhaps that Readers Digest could become something new...

via Anthroplogie

So today between waiting for coats of paint to dry, out came my supplies... more pages were cut, a bit of cardboard salvaged from the recycling bin... and I had lots of little baubles.  I also used a plain old bamboo skewer for the "post".   You know the ones you use for kabobs... I didn't take a picture of that...

I cut the squares of paper, not trying to be perfect, graduating the sizes down to about the size of a dime... well a dime if it was square that is.  The paper squares were just popped right on the pointy end of the skewer... but I did poke a hole in each piece of cardboard since it was a bit stiff to try to poke directly onto the skewer (yeah, I broke one trying this method!).  Fortunately my handy little Martha Stewart tool (above) from Micheaels is a blade cutter, bone folder, tweezers, and punch all in one!   The cardboard was cut in small squares although I did use one large piece as the base.

The little bauble is a tiny little Christmas ball that has lost it's loop for hanging... and has just the right vintage patina.

Since I hadn't thought of a base... I just placed it in a vintage pottery pot for now.  The tree came out to be about 3 to 4 inches shy of the length  of the skewer so the bottom of the skewer can hang down into the vase.

From this side angle you can see the layers of cardboard between each piece of paper.

I'm really liking how this vintage paper look is coming together for the holidays.... plus my version of this tree was basically free!

Tomorrow is another day off for me.  A shopping adventure with my Mom.  A Christmas sale at a local thrift store that is held once a year in mid-November.... hopefully I'll be coming home with some fun vintage Christmas treasures...

Or perhaps some additional vintage Readers Digests for the newly crowned paper Queen,