Six Steps to Beautiful Christmas Tree

Last week, I showed you my silver and gold Christmas Tree from my dining room and promised to share more this week about how I decorate my trees.  So when I started on my Teddy Bear tree in the living room, I tried to take pictures as I went to give you some ideas.

Step 1: Set up the Tree I bought a brand new tree this year.  I shopped around a bit because I knew I wanted a prelit tree that had the "sure-light" or "smartlight" technology so that if one bulb went out, the rest of the lights stay lit.  And I also knew that I wanted a "quick shape" tree so it wouldn't need as much fluffing as a regular tree.  I found this one at Hobby Lobby and it lived up to it's promise.  AJ and I got it out of the box and up, lit and ready to start decorating in about 10 minutes.

Step 2: Add Garland  Garlands can be anything from strung popcorn or beads to florals.  On Pinterest a few months back, I saw where someone had taken apart a grape vine wreath to use it as a garland on a Christmas tree.  When I was making fall crafts, I came across two grape vine garlands I bought way back before Roberts Crafts went out of business and I knew exactly what to do with it:

Step 3: Add Fabric  After Christmas last year, I bought a couple of rolls of this burlap at Walmart on clearance.  I had planned to use it for Valentines but never got around to it.

To put it on the tree, I just pinched together the end and ran floral wire around it and attached it near the top of the tree as far into the branch as I could get. 

Then I bunched it back up and attach it to a lower branch like this:

Then I just did a second loop on it like this:

I didn't want to make this a long garland down the tree so I cut it off and then placed five more on the tree.  When I'm placing things on my tree, I always try to form triangles with them.  That helps with a random but uniform look like this:

Step 5: Add Ribbon Streamers  I knew I wanted to put natural burlap on the tree so I found six other ribbons I liked and made two different groupings of ribbons.  I wanted to make sure I mixed patterns and solids and textures.  I took four of the ribbons, made a loop at the top, and added floral wire like this:

Then I attached it to the tree, again setting it back into the branch a ways and letting it cascade down or drape over neighboring branches, however looks best.

To get the ringlets in the ribbon, I used a narrow cardboard tube (the one that the red burlap was wound around) like this (sorry this one is a little fuzzy):

Once I got all the ribbons on, I looked like this:

Step 4: Add Picks  Next I added three different kinds of picks to the tree.  The first one I found in the floral department, not the Christmas pick area, so it needed to be cut apart before I placed small sections of it around the tree:

Here are the other two picks I used:

Again, I use the triangle method to place the picks in the tree too.  When that was done, it looked like this:

Step 6: Add Ornaments Of course the last step is to add your ornaments to the tree.  I always start with the largest ornaments first (stuffed bears in this case) and work my way down to the smaller, more traditional ones.   Here is what it looked like when I did all that:

I suppose step 7 would be to finish the tree with a topper and skirt.  This tree is still a work in progress so I don't have those to share with you yet.  I'd still like to some more "chalkboard" style signs to go on the tree.  When it is just right, I'll post another picture (which might be next year).

If you prefer video tutorials, the Jennifer Decorates has a good one that inspired the way I do my ribbon streamers and the first pick I used.  But remember, there is no right or wrong way to decorate a tree.  As long as you love the way your tree looks when you finish it, then that is all that matters.

I still have one more tree to share and of course, I'll continue to share about other Christmas decor projects I have done around my house too.