Today's 'make' is brought to you by the power of full-strength coffee.
Yessir, I've been drinking full-strength coffee for several days now and going to the gym, so there's no telling when this bus will stop.
Just warning ya.
Going through my Pinterest boards when she was here the other day, Able Baker Dana pointed out yet another Christmas project I'd pinned last year.
My hair caught fire (the time was right) and we hopped up right then and started making.
Pretty soon there was a sweet little paper forest growing under the chalkboard.
But, the real reason my hair caught fire was because another special little forest had started growing on the shelf under the Mickey Mouse Christmas puzzle (which, until this month, had been waiting for a frame for two or three years).
I had finally gotten my hands on some bottle-brush trees (love them!) and added them to some little trees we'd made last year (which had never seen the light of day); I knew adding the paper trees to the growing forest would make me very happy.
Actually, I was already very happy, but the little trees do make me smile.
You can see the original source of this delightful idea, and get the original pattern and instructions (for the large tree), from the generous Katja at http://shiftctrlart.com/Blogpost/umti.
When we started our fevered cutting, I decided pretty quickly that I wanted several sizes, so I've made some of my own patterns and you can download them here.
The pattern is for letter-size paper, and you need to cut two pieces for each tree.
To assemble, just cut a slit down the center of one tree from the top half way to the bottom, cut the other tree up the center from the bottom half way to the top , and then slide them into each other; a little finessing is all you'll need to make them stand up.
A couple of suggestions:
If you're going to make a forest or two, just print the pattern out on copy paper to use as a master and then run your letter size colored cardstock through the printer; no tracing necessary.
If you're going to make just a few trees: first, please tell me how you exercise that kind of restraint and, second, print your pattern on cardstock and cut out the trees to use as patterns for tracing.
And remember, kids, never, ever run with scissors.
You might drop them and hurt them.
