From 2014-2016 I chronicled my crafty endeavors on the site Adventures-in-Making. I’ve selected a few of those DIY’s, Recipes, and other posts to share on the site.

Even before I was done building little chipboard houses I knew they would need a little setting to live in. I wanted to come up with a simple and flexible tree template that I could make a whole forest out of. Inspired by my old paper bird project, I used strips of chipboard to build these trees.

Supplies

• Scrap chipboard: from the backs of notepads or boxes. My pieces were 8.5×11″
• You favorite paper glue
• Clothespins or clips
• Craft knife
• Scoring Tool: a bone folder or dull knife work great

I began by making two score lines along the long side of the board, at .5″ and at 2.5″.

Then I cut two pieces, 1″ wide, off the other side for the trunk of my tree. The remaining piece of chipboard had my score marks on it, and I trimmed it into 1″ pieces (each piece has the same score marks).

I applied glue to the trunk pieces, and clipped them together to dry.

While the trunk glue was drying, I folded each of my small pieces along the score marks, forming an L.

Piece by piece, I applied glue to the .5″ flap and the top of the L…

then clipped them to the trunk. In this picture you can see that I folded the two pieces of the trunk away from each other at the base; this will allow the trees to sit by themselves.

I continued to add tree pieces until I liked what I saw (typically between 2 and 4 tiers), holding each piece with a couple of clips.

When I was happy, let the glue sit overnight, held by the clips. (Happy little trees, as the man said.)

On some I trimmed the top a bit, some I left tall. I love the way the variety turned out. These would be great with snowy glitter added, or paint. I’m just happy to have a forest for my little chipboard houses.

Trees for the little paper world.

Yes, I know I sound crazy. Now go make something!

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