DIY Christmas Tree

My friend Scott sent me this idea and I had to try it...genius really. I don't know where he got this idea but I'm totally stealing it from him. It's garland wrapped around a tomato cage - totally made my own Christmas tree!

Supplies:
- round tomato cage (or in my case 2 cages!)
- 45' standard soft garland
- 18' wired garland (mine has lights in it, Scott's doesn't)
- a planter or not, depending on where you are going to put it
- pine cones, berries, bulbs, lights...whatever  you want
- a bunch of 4" zip ties
- tape to shape the tip of the tree

All the instructions I needed apparently :)

Scott's tree with the wired garland, bulbs,
berries, and cones. He made two of these. 

Since he is a guy he just sent me these two pictures without any instructions - so of course I blew up his phone texting him a ton of questions... I think I was just supposed to figure it out from the picture haha. After he gave me detailed info I was able to build my own tree, and so can you. Not hard at all once I got going - the worst thing was trying to find the wired garland, every place I checked was out of it. I was going to give up and scrap this idea but then decided to just modify the project and do it with what I could still find, and it turned out great. Different from Scott's of course, but that's the beauty of DIY! He found all of his supplies at Lowes, and made two trees for $50 total (instead of paying $100 each at the store for them!). Mine cost more because I used two cages for one tree and 18' pre-lit garland instead of wired.

Start by putting the cage upside down either in a planter or just flat on the ground. Scott used one cage per tree but I found after wrapping soft garland over one cage without the wired garland to fill it out it made a more triangle shape tree instead of round - so I ended up using two cages to give it more shape. I bent one to fit inside the planter and then put one over the planter for stability. Wrap tape (I used electrical tape) around the 3 legs to make a cone shape on the top. Using the zip ties to hold the garland in place, wind the 45' of standard garland around and around the cage. When it's completely covered add the 18' of wired garland overtop - this makes it fuller and fills in the gaps. I used additional standard garland that had lights in it instead since I couldn't find the wired kind and it turned out good - "make it work" is the motto here. Add whatever decorations you want, I just did a few cones and berries.


I wasn't loving the bottom of the cage being exposed so wrapped an additional string of lights around the the planter - more lights always helps :) Thanks Scott, this was a good one!