Christmas Tree Extravaganza!

I was experimenting with some pop up Christmas tree cards and I came up with a few fun styles that I thought I'd share.  They aren't fully completed with a backing so normally you wouldn't see the dark area behind the tree.  Here they are....

This one is my favorite it's just a series of straight cuts varying in length. You fold every other one out and that creates the spaces in the branches.

This is how you cut the star... I made it larger so you can see but just size it down to fit your tree.  The fold is on the right side of the photo and you cut along the lines.

Then you fold the star the opposite direction and wha la!

Here is a variation of the same tree... instead of straight lines you cut at an angle. You have to cut the lines up if you want the "branches" going down.

With this tree you cut curvy lines instead of straight ones and you fold all of them out so it's more of a solid tree.  *sorry about the blurry pic

This one is kind of hard to explain but it's fun and different and think it would look great if the backing paper was white so you didn't notice the big cuts in the sides.

This effect was created by one cut slanting down and one cut slanting up and only folding out every other one.  I would like this one better if I wouldn't have colored the pieces I didn't fold out.

Why? You ask are you making pop up Christmas tree cards? My mom babysits 2 boys (8 & 9 years old) in the mornings and they were going to make a bunch of Christmas cards for all of the people at a retirement/hospice home.

All of these trees only took me about 30 min and there were even a few that I attempted new designs that didn't work out.  This is a great simple and quick craft that you can complete in a short amount of time with minimal supplies.