Pop-up Christmas Tree Card

As a kid, I loved making Christmas cards or presents for my family members and friends.  A tradition I'm trying to pass on to my kids.  At the beginning of December, I set up our special "Advent House" with an activity to do each day.  One of the activities this year was to make Christmas cards.  Well, these turned out to be some pretty fancy cards - especially when made by children ages one and three, with yes, quite a bit of help from mom.  Here is how the idea unfolded....

I was busy one day making my own Christmas tree pattern for another craft I was making.  I took a piece of white card stock, folded it in half and proceeded to draw one half of the tree.  I ended up making a few different patterns until I got one exactly how I wanted it.  By this time, I had a few trees out of card stock lying around and held them all together in one hand.

Hmmm, I got to thinking.  If I glued half of each one together, they would stand up and make a very cute 3-D Christmas tree!

Lets see....that could make a very nice Christmas card!  White card stock?   Hmmmm.  Looks like snow.  All we need is some green and we'll have nice snow topped Christmas trees.

Here is how we started:

1. Lay out white card stock and brush strokes of green across the paper.  You will need four pieces of paper four each tree.  Let dry. (The kids did this part.)

2.  Fold each paper in half, hot dog style, so the green is to the inside.

3.  Draw or Trace your Christmas tree onto the paper.  You can choose to trace the entire tree or just trace half of the tree onto your folded paper and cut both sides at one time. 

4.  After each tree is cut out, begin by folding 1/2 of one tree to 1/2 of the other tree.  Then continue to add the rest of the tree shapes the same way.

5.  Lastly, I gave the oldest stickers and let her have a blast decorating the trees.  We used ornament stickers, snowmen, and snowflakes. 

We wrote a Christmas message on some of the "white space" and then folded the tree back up together and put it in a regular business envelope.  It is quite thick though, if it is done this way  - all braches together on one side.  It would work better to have a bigger envelope and just lay the tree flat.  Or, they can simply be decoration around the house, not a card. 

Merry Christmas!

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