Book-cycle Christmas Tree

Welcome to our affordable festive craft project made from an old book and bits of sparkle you have lying around the house or in the stash.

We have designed this project as a safe and easy make for all ages. These upcycled book trees would make a wonderful and thoughtful gift this festive season.

As always, we aim to make crafting accessible and have produced our instructions in a long and short video format, in addition to the written ones below.

You Will Need

An old book.
Embellishments. We used tinsel yarn, pom poms and an ink pad. The ink pad was rubbed along the outer creases (see below).
Something sticky, such as PVA (white) glue, glue dots, double-sided sticky tape.

Step 1

The magic number is around 100-125 pages. If your book is longer than this, then separate these pages from the rest of the book to create a smaller book.

Step 2

Take the first page of the book. Fold it towards the spine to make a right-angled triangle. Ensure a sharp crease.

Step 3

Fold the page, again, towards the spine.

Step 4

The bottom of the page currently extends beyond the book. To hide this, turn the page over and fold the bottom right corner of the page to make a small right-angled triangle. Turn the page back over to complete.

Step 5

Repeat steps 2-4 until every page has been folded. As the book get bulkier, ensure your folds are as close to the spine as possible.

Step 6

Stick the front and back pages together using a small amount of glue. We glue in one place towards the top-centre and this helped maintain a full tree skirt shape.

Ruffle the pages into a shape you are happy with for the tree.