Upcycling
How to make a DIY Christmas tree
Why do Christmas trees have to be traditional? They don't! Have fun this year and take a DIY approach.
You'll experience the enjoyment of planning and doing an awesome creative project, making the place look uniquely yours, and you won't have to deal with the sadness of a lonely tree on the street in January.
Sugru Mouldable Glue is great for this project because it bonds securely to the wall, and you can shape it into strong hooks. It also bonds very well to a whole host of other materials (including walnuts in this case), and you can stick pins through it! All will become clear...
Also, a little Sugru goes a surprisingly long way - this entire tree uses a total of eight white single-use packs of Sugru.
We used leaves and walnuts to decorate our tree - feel free to copy this one, or you may have your own ideas for what you could use to make your decorations. This project has several steps, so do it in bursts over a weekend.
Step 1 - Make a Sugru hook in the corner of a room
Open a single-use pack of Sugru and divide it into three equal pieces. Take one of those pieces and shape a hook in the corner between two walls at the height you want for the top of your tree. This hook will be holding your lights in a tree shape. Be sure to press it into the wall securely several times to get a good bond, then create the hook shape by drawing the Sugru out between your fingers and curling it upwards. Leave to set for 12-24 hours.
Step 2 - Make two curled Sugru hooks
Mark out the bottom two corner points of your tree. Using the remaining two parts of your single-use pack of Sugru, form two hooks and shape them to the left and right, curling inwards so that they will hug the fairy lights and keep them in place. Leave to set for 12-24 hours.
Step 3 - Make Sugru wedge hooks
These little wedge hooks keep the lights tidy on the base of the tree - hugging the wall.
Open another single-use pack of Sugru and divide it into as many pieces as you need. We made five wedge hooks in total to keep our lights tidy. Simply stick each small piece of Sugru to the skirting board and draw the shape upwards between your fingers. Then gently press it towards the wall leaving roughly the diameter of the fairy lights behind - enough for it to wedge them in place.
Now leave all your hooks to set for 12-24 hours, and Sugru will turn into a strong and durable rubber.
Step 4 - Make small Sugru nodes on the wall
These are where you will pin all your decorations. For this tree, we divided each single-use pack of Sugru into 15 small balls. Roll each small ball between your hands for a few seconds to make it a little extra sticky. Then press the ball onto the wall firmly into a small node shape. It should have enough depth to be able to hold a pin. Leave to set for 12-24 hours.
Step 5 - Make your decorations
This is the really fun bit! We decided that walnuts would look really cute sprayed white and pinned in front of red leaves. You could hang all sorts of things though, as Sugru bonds well to metals, ceramic, hard plastics and glass, in particular. In our case, we opened a single-use pack of Sugru and added small nodes to the top of each walnut. The idea is that, once the Sugru sets and turns into rubber, we could then simply pin them to the wall. Each single-use pack made around 15-20 decorations. Leave to set for 12-24 hours.
Step 6 - Put it all together
We went gathering fallen leaves in the neighbourhood, which was fun - don't the spikey ones look particularly cute? Then we sprayed them red to make them extra Christmassy. For the walnuts, once the Sugru had set, we sprayed them white.
To put it all together, all you need are pins - they will glide nicely through the Sugru and the leaf, and firmly into the Sugru node on the wall, keeping everything hung very nicely and securely. We estimate that a pin with Sugru nodes like this can probably hold individual decorations weighing up to around 20g.
Then, have fun filling up your tree and watching it come to life!
