DIY Paper Christmas Trees {Vintage Farmhouse!}

Make paper Christmas trees easily from up-cycled book pages, newspaper or magazines. Perfect Christmas decorations and easy paper crafts! They look great in so many styles from Scandinavian modern to vintage and farmhouse!

To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, let’s make some paper Christmas trees from recycled magazines, newspapers, or old book pages! 

DIY paper Christmas trees from up-cycled books or newspaper. Easy paper crafts & beautiful decorations for vintage, farmhouse & Scandinavian modern styles and mini Christmas villages!

If you love to create magical little Christmas villages or mini winter wonderland, you will love these these DIY paper Christmas trees! 

You can use these paper Christmas trees with our DIY mini paper houses, tutorial and free templates here.

3D mini paper houses for Christmas decorations
DIY mini paper houses: tutorial and free templates here!

*Some resources in article are affiliate links. Full disclosure here.

More easy Christmas crafts and modern farmhouse decorating ideas:

Materials and tools to make Paper Christmas trees

Magical winter wonderland Christmas village with paper Christmas trees  from old book papges
 vintage farmhouse  DIY paper Christmas trees

Make it portable

Step 1: Cut paper strips to size

Our DIY paper Christmas trees (not including tree trunks and base, which adds 2″ in height) are about 2″ to 3″ diameter at the base, and 3″ to 4.5″ tall.

 book pages and newspaper to make tabletop Christmas trees

The following measurements are based on a 3″ wide and 4.5″ tall paper tree. You can adjust them to your paper tree size.

Cut 7 paper strips, each at 11″ long, starting at 3″ wide, decreasing every 0.25″ to 1.5″ wide. Then cut another 4 or 5 pieces of paper strips at 1.5″ wide by 11″ long. This is because it is much easier to fold wider paper strips then cut them, than to fold really narrow paper strips, as you will see in next step.

Paper tree Christmas decorations and crafts

You may also love: 5-minute DIY paper Christmas ornaments with free patterns!

DIY paper Christmas ornaments
5-minute DIY paper Christmas ornaments with free patterns!

Step 2: make ruffled paper discs / rosettes 

folding newspaper

Take a paper strip and Create small accordion folds. It does not have to be perfect  can also layer two three paper strips together when folding, and separate them after to make this step faster.

Next find the mid point of the folded paper strip by folding it in half, put some glue in this area, and twist once to make a butterfly shape. The glue will help hold the shape together.

make paper rosettes

Pinch the middle as you open the folds to form a rosette. See video tutorial above Step 1 if you are not sure about this step.

As the paper strips get narrower, it becomes harder to fold and twist, which is why we  are making several 1.5 inch wide strips into rosettes first, and trim the paper discs / rosettes later into smaller ones towards the paper Christmas tree top.

different size  paper rosettes for paper Christmas tree

It is also helpful to cut the narrower paper strips into half length and make two rosettes instead of a really thick one.

modern farmhouse paper Christmas tree decorations

Step 3: glue and trim rosettes into paper Christmas trees 

gluing  paper rosettes in a stack

Stack the paper discs / rosettes to form a Christmas tree shape, starting at the base with the largest rosette. Add a dab of glue or hot glue at the center of each ruffled paper disc as you stack them, and push it down to attach to the previous one.

gluing paper rosettes in a stack

Once you finish stacking and gluing, trim the tops of the paper Christmas trees to a pointy shape.

trim paper Christmas tree

Step 4: attach trunk and base to DIY paper Christmas trees 

glue twigs as Christmas tree trunks

Cut some twigs or small branches into pieces that are 1″ to 2″ long, and use hot glue to glue the to the bottom center of the paper trees as tree trunks.

decorating with DIY paper Christmas trees and green moss

Next, hot glue the base of the tree trunks to larger wood discs or cubes to give each tree a stable base.

Additional tips:

tabletop paper Christmas trees

You can play with how many paper rosettes of each size to stack. This will change the tree shape and height.

As mentioned in Step 2, because it harder to fold and twist very small rosettes, we made several 1.5 inch wide strips into rosettes first, and trim the paper discs / rosettes later into smaller ones later for the paper Christmas tree top.

make Christmas paper crafts

Happy creating! See you soon!

13 Comments

  1. Hi!
    These are really cute.Thanks for sharing so many fun things on your site.
    Might try this with a single full-length strip of wrapping paper & spiral it up (glue dabs as I spiral)
    Seems as though it might work well & save time..

  2. Wow such and amazing idea, there is a tutorial for that character as well or you bought it?
    Thank you and merry christmas!

  3. These are adorable. I may try using some vintage wooden spools for bases as I scored a bag of them for $1. Wrapped with a Christmas ribbon, I think they will be really cute!

  4. Thanks for sharing the paper Christmas trees tutorials. This is soo amazing!! I have seen something like this in a really chic home decor store $$$! Now we are going to make our own this weekend with the kids! Thank you and merry Christmas!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Send this to a friend