Make a Christmas tree with your own hands, cheaply, cheerfully and, in addition, quickly? This is possible, especially if there is a little accumulation in your home. plastic containers- bottles or cups.
We present to your attention a double detailed master class: how to make an exclusive New Year’s structure with your own hands from recycled materials.
Master class 1: Christmas tree made from plastic bottles
We will need:
- plastic bottles of different sizes, from 0.3 to 3 liters. Preferably green;
- a wooden stick, the height of which is the same as our Christmas tree. The diameter of the stick should be slightly smaller than the diameter of the neck of the bottles;
- bottle cap;
- stationery knife;
- scissors.
Stage one:
Carefully cut off the bottom of all plastic bottles. Carefully, use a stationery knife - first you need to make a puncture in the wall, and only then saw around the circumference. If sawing with a knife seems difficult, then you can cut with scissors. We leave one large bottom - it will serve as a support on which the Christmas tree will rest. The remaining bottoms can be thrown away.
Stage two:
We cut bottles with sawn-off bottoms into strips 2-2.5 cm wide, naturally, without bringing the cut to the neck. As a result, we get a kind of plastic “flower”.
Stage three:
We cut each strip along the edge, leaving a distance of 0.5 mm between the cuts. These are our “needles”. This way we will be able to make the future Christmas tree “fluffy”. We bend each “needle” - the branches turn out “lush”.
Stage four:
We carefully string the branches onto a stick with our own hands - this is how the Christmas tree is assembled. Wider blanks (from larger-volume bottles) will naturally be at the base, and smaller ones (bottles of smaller capacity) will be at the top. We put the bottom of the bottle on a stick, this will be the base on which the tree rests. We screw the cap on top, you can hammer in a nail for strength.
Christmas tree made from plastic bottles is ready! Decorate! Tinsel, rain and simple matte balls will look great on such a unique New Year's beauty. A garland on an ascetic plastic tree can also look very stylish. Experiment!
Master class 2: how to make a Christmas tree from cups
The most difficult thing in this procedure is perhaps finding green cups.
We will need:
- plastic cups;
- stapler;
- glue;
- toys, balls for decorations.
Stage one:
We place eight cups in the first row with our own hands, in a semicircle. We fasten them with a stapler. Then we put the second row on top - already seven cups. We also fasten them with a stapler. And so on, each row is one glass less. The rows can be lightly glued together for reliability, and also secured with staples. The finished tree should be stable.
Stage two:
Place a toy or ball in each cup. You can drip a little glue so that they are securely fixed inside. By the way, if you have a special glue gun– great, it will help you attach toys to the plastic unnoticed.
Original Christmas tree from plastic cups ready! But if you think that this idea is not creative enough, then here are options for decorating or modifying such a structure with your own hands:
- You can lay out the cups not in a semicircle, but in a circle. Only in this case is it better to “plant” them on a base made of a cardboard cone. Such a tree will have an attractive “facade”, that is, it can be placed in the center of the room, while a semicircular one looks good when standing against the wall.
- If you make a small cut in the top of each cup, you can pass a ribbon through it, secure it with a knot, and hang the decoration on it.
- Macaroni bows painted with golden gouache will look great as decorations.
- You can place a garland inside a round Christmas tree made from cups. It will shine very beautifully through the plastic, and its top light bulb will perfectly replace the traditional star.
Creative Christmas trees are good because they are unusual; they can be created from the most different materials, and edible trees will become a decoration and the main highlight of the New Year's table.
How to make a Christmas tree from plastic bottles?
To make such a fluffy beauty, take:
- green plastic bottles;
- scissors;
- scotch;
- a wooden stick, the diameter of which is slightly smaller than the hole in the neck of the bottle.
Trim the shoulders of the bottle, leaving only the neck. You will put a wooden stick into it. Starting from the bottom, attach the blanks from the bottle here so that the fringe points up.
We decorate the entire trunk, and attach a small part on top, which will become the top.
The blanks must be fastened in such a way that the largest ones are at the bottom and the smallest at the top.
Here's what else a Christmas tree made from plastic bottles can be like. Making one with your own hands is also quite simple.
To reproduce this masterpiece, take:
- green plastic bottles;
- scissors;
- a wooden stick of a suitable size.
Now you need to make diagonal cuts on sides 1 and 2 of each tape. Fold the resulting fragments over one another.
Take the bottom of a large bottle, make a hole in it, put the neck of the bottle into it, into which you insert wooden stick. Secure this part of the structure with a cork by screwing it onto the neck.
Place pre-made parts on the stick, starting with the largest bottle and ending with the smallest one.
If you threaded all the parts onto the barrel with the neck down, then place the last one with the neck up. Secure the tree by placing a lid on the top of the tree.
The result was a wonderful tall tree made from plastic bottles. From this container you can make even more large tree, putting bottles, for example, on a mop.
If you want to make a cone-shaped tree, then roll a piece of paper or cardboard in this way. Cut off the neck of the bottle and insert a paper blank here. Cut trapezoidal fragments from other parts of the container. Chop the longest edges of each piece into equal strips, not reaching the top 2 cm.
Secure these elements with tape, arranging them in ascending order, starting with large and ending with small.
This is what should happen in the end.
If, for example, you work in a grocery store, then you can put up a large Christmas tree made from plastic bottles, which will certainly attract customers. To do this, you need to arrange the bottles in a circle in rows, and place plywood circles on them. Each subsequent tier is smaller than the diameter of the previous one. There should be 3 bottles left closer to the top; place a star on top.
Even empty plastic bottles will become an excellent decorative element. You can backlight it so that the trees sparkle attractively at dusk.
Other waste materials will also become a picturesque Christmas tree.
Making a Christmas tree out of paper with your own hands - master class
Once magazines are read, they are usually thrown away. But you can do it differently, make a paper tree. To create it, you can use newspapers and old books.
Here is a list of what is needed:
- a sheet of cardboard or whatman paper;
- colorful magazine;
- shaped hole punch;
- glue gun or PVA;
- pencil.
These parts need to be given a rounded shape. To do this, screw each one onto a pencil. Now you can glue them to the base, starting from the bottom.
Place the pieces as close to each other as possible so that the cardboard is not visible between them. Glue in rows, placing the elements on top of each other. Wrap one of them around the top of your head. The paper Christmas tree is ready.
If you like clean lines, then check out the next option.
This tree would be appropriate in an office. On the one hand, it has a strict shape, and on the other, it looks festive. Here's what you need for this craft:
- whatman;
- double tape;
- wrapping;
- regular tape;
- decorations;
- scissors.
Roll this base into a ball and secure with tape.
The excess needs to be cut off.
Wrap the cone with wrapping paper. To do this, place it on work surface, place a cardboard blank on top, secure it with tape at the top of the head.
Wrap the cone completely, then secure the edges of the paper with double tape and trim off the excess.
The lower part of the tree must also be made flat by removing the paper here with scissors. Decorate the Christmas tree with a star, ribbons, you can decorate it with candies or beads.
Here's what else a paper Christmas tree can be like.
Take:
- skewer;
- designer paper or colored cardboard;
- thick cardboard;
- glue or glue gun.
Here's what kind of paper Christmas tree you can make using polystyrene foam.
For creativity you will need:
- foam or cardboard;
- green corrugated paper;
- scissors;
- adhesive tape;
- masking tape;
- marker;
- PVA glue;
- hook;
- stationery knife.
Cut a strip of corrugated paper, chop it with scissors in the form of a fringe, slightly short of reaching the opposite edge. Start gluing these decorated ribbons from the bottom.
When the entire creative tree is decorated in this way, decorate it as you wish. Glue a rectangle of cardboard from the bottom, having previously painted it in Brown color. But you can do without this part of the trunk. To attach the tree to the wall, use a hook or double tape.
This is what a wonderful Christmas tree came out of paper. Textile models are very interesting; for them you can use leftover material.
Christmas tree made of fabric and threads
To make such a stylish beauty, take:
- felt;
- cardboard;
- scissors;
- double tape or glue.
It is better to take material in two shades, then the creative Christmas tree will look more contrasting.
Roll the cardboard into a cone. You can wrap the bottom part with a small amount of tinsel. Cut felt circles and use scissors to make intersecting sections in the middle. They are needed in order to put the felt blanks on the base, which is what you will do. These X-shaped cuts will also help the circles become wavy.
First put on the larger blanks, then the medium ones, the smallest ones will be on top. When you fill the entire cone, all you have to do is decorate your creation and admire what a beautiful fabric Christmas tree you have made.
You can also make a very cute tree from threads.
To make this, take:
- a cone made of foam plastic or cardboard;
- fleecy yarn;
- pins;
- decorations;
- thick yarn.
When you have formed the entire cone, do not cut these two threads, but now wrap them around the base, moving down.
Cut the thread and secure the remaining end with a pin. Decorate the Christmas tree with beads or buttons, and also attach them with a pin or sewing.
The next creative DIY Christmas tree is made from wire and thread. Help yourself with pliers or round nose pliers, bend a piece of wire so that it looks like a star. Attach a thinner wire to it, which must first be rolled into a cone. Wrap it with threads. You can simply make such a star out of wire and attach it to the top of the blue Christmas tree you just created.
Your New Year's table will look amazing if you decorate it with edible Christmas trees. Look how wonderful this strawberry tree looks.
You can make a chocolate base and attach the berries to it with the point outward using a toothpick.
Here are some other original trees you can create from products.
Check out the related workshops.
Edible Christmas tree: step-by-step preparation
To make one, take:
- wooden skewer;
- apple;
- cucumbers;
- red and yellow sweet peppers;
- plate.
Place the apple half cut side down on a platter or plate. Stick a skewer into it. Chop the cucumber into not too thin slices.
Place these slices on a skewer, starting with the largest one. Arrange them in a checkerboard pattern or approximately so that they look like Christmas tree branches.
Cut small pieces from red and yellow peppers. Place them on some cucumbers or secure them with toothpicks. Thread an elongated piece of pepper onto the top of the head, closing the skewer on top.
You can decorate a New Year's dish with this tree, for example, a salad. Place a little parsley along the edge of the plate, which will symbolize green grass.
The next tree consists of fruits, berries and vegetables. Take:
- large carrots;
- apple;
- kiwi;
- strawberries;
- toothpicks;
- grape;
- greenery;
- hole for removing the core from apples.
Wash the apple. Use a special tool to remove the middle from one side. On the other side, make an even cut so that the apple stands firmly on the plate.
Place the carrot in the hole. Stick toothpicks into it. Thread kiwi halves, strawberries and grapes onto them. The star can be cut from a suitable fruit or vegetable, or from a thick piece of cheese. Decorate a plate with greenery to make the tree look even more picturesque.
The next tree is made from apples. To prevent them from darkening, the cut slices should be dipped in a solution of lemon juice for 15 minutes.
First you need to cut out the middle of the apples, then chop these fruits into circles. Using a knife or a special notch, give these blanks a star shape. Place it on a plate and place a slightly smaller piece on top. Adhering to this tactic, lay the Christmas tree to the end. Decorate it with cranberries and physalis.
If you are making a New Year's salad, lay it out in a cone-shaped mound and compact it. Cut the leek leaves to resemble sharp corners. Stick the resulting decorations into the salad so that the leaves turn into twigs. Decorate the Christmas tree with finely chopped carrots.
If you don't have leeks, then you can garnish the salad with dill. Look at the photos to see how to arrange the branches, starting from the bottom.
A creative Christmas tree can be made from many other products.
Cut the cheese into sharp triangles, thread them onto a pre-attached skewer, and garnish with a slice of red pepper. Decorate the plate with tomato and kiwi slices.
If you have green pepper, turn its slices into lush spruce branches and make a New Year's tree from this edible material. Circles and slices of lemon or grapefruit will also become a picturesque decoration for the New Year's table.
If you use kiwi for this, use unripe ones so that the circles stick tightly to the base.
Meat lovers will also not be left at a loss. After all, an edible Christmas tree can be created from salami slices.
Place them on a skewer attached to half an apple and drape the top. Decorate the plate with greenery, and the masterpiece can be placed on the New Year's table.
Vegetarians and connoisseurs proper nutrition They will be able to make a Christmas tree out of broccoli, decorate it with cherry tomatoes, and make a star out of sweet peppers. The asparagus stalks will turn into a tree trunk, and cauliflower- into white snowdrifts.
The basis of the next Christmas tree is a salad, but it is better to take one whose ingredients can be held together well. A dish that contains boiled rice is perfect. Decorating the base green leaves salad, then you need to decorate this edible Christmas tree with peeled shrimp and cherry tomatoes.
If you like Asian cuisine, make the rolls with added greens so that the base has that shade. If they contain caviar, then this ingredient will also act as a decoration. Fold the rolls as shown in the photo to create a comfortable Christmas tree.
Those with a sweet tooth can decorate the base made of polystyrene or foam rubber with candies, attaching them with toothpicks. And if your family likes to eat well, then use small sausages, slices of sausage, tomatoes and lettuce on the base. You can also add other edible ingredients here, thereby delighting those who love a hearty meal.
Gourmets will surely love the horizontal Christmas tree made from tomatoes and different varieties cheese - a great opportunity and reason to try them.
If you like a candy tree, attach them to a plastic bottle with tape. And if you don’t know what to give an adult as a New Year’s gift, then use a bottle of champagne as a base, decorating it in this way. Give this present.
If you like to bake, make gingerbread or shortbread dough, roll it out, cut out stars using special notches or just a knife. All that remains is to decorate the baked sweets with white icing and place them on top of each other.
On New Year's table even pizza will create the right mood. To do this, when rolling out the dough, cut out a Christmas tree from it, decorate with cherry tomatoes, olives and slices of smoked sausage or chicken pieces. Sprinkle your masterpiece with a little cheese and bake in the oven.
New Year's craft: DIY Christmas tree made from plastic bottles - another extremely unusual and very beautiful craft from empty used plastic containers. In addition, you don’t have to throw away the bottle, making an original masterpiece out of scrap self made. To make such a Christmas tree you need a minimum of time and expense. A master class on making a Christmas tree from plastic bottles will tell you in detail how to make an original New Year's craft from used materials, in this case PET containers.
Craft: DIY Christmas tree made from plastic bottles
To make a decorative New Year's craft: a Christmas tree from plastic bottles, you will need the following:
- Plastic bottles - 3 pcs;
- Scotch;
- Sheet thick paper, ideally whatman paper (A4);
- Scissors;
So, cut the bottle as shown in the photo below. That is, it is necessary to cut off the bottom and neck so that a straight pipe from the bottle remains.
Next you need to make blanks for the branches. In order for the tree to have a cone-shaped shape, the blanks must have different sizes. That is, you need to achieve the following: 
Cut each plastic bottle lengthwise into 3 equal parts and then adjust their sizes so that each subsequent tier is slightly smaller than the previous one. Then each workpiece must be “dissolved into needles.” The neck of one of the bottles will serve as a stand for our future New Year's craft.
The next step is to roll the Whatman paper into a tube. We insert it into the neck of the bottle and secure it with tape in a circle.
Now all that remains is to fix each tier of the tree with tape in a circle and a little New Year's craft: the Christmas tree with your own hands is ready!
The top of our New Year's tree You can decorate with a homemade Christmas tree decoration or complete the Christmas tree the way we did.
If you want to make a fluffier Christmas tree from PET bottles, like the one in the photo below, when making the Christmas tree, you need to cut the needles as thinly as possible (more often).
Well, if you want to make a craft: Large Christmas tree do it yourself from plastic bottles, watch the master class on how to make it.
Share your festive mood and new craft ideas, write your reviews, questions and wishes in the comments. We welcome every action on your part. Happy crafts and a wonderful New Year's mood!
Watch other master classes on making using various techniques.
A DIY Christmas tree made from plastic bottles can be a great surprise for the New Year and Christmas holidays. This article will describe various ways making such a craft.
Materials and tools
First, let's look at the materials and tools that will be needed in the process of making such a magnificent decoration as a Christmas tree made from plastic bottles with your own hands. This list includes the following items:
Cardboard or Whatman paper.
Markers, pencils and paints.
Plastic bottles. Preferably green: after all, the natural color of the Christmas tree is green. But any other is possible. In this case, you will have to additionally purchase green paint and use it to properly decorate the final craft.
Stationery scissors and a knife for cutting plastic bottles.
Black marker for marking.
Glue and tape.
Wire.
Steel pipe.
Electric drill with drill bit.
Methods
There are several ways to make a Christmas tree with your own hands from plastic bottles. It could be:
Method one: big Christmas tree
This DIY Christmas tree made from plastic bottles is made from a fairly large amount of containers. Therefore, before starting work, it is necessary to collect an impressive supply of such bottles. There are two ways to create such a craft. The first of them consists of the following sequence:
We take a metal pipe of the required length and install it in the ground at the place where the Christmas tree is collected using a hammer.
Then, step by step, around this pipe we make circles of the “lower tier of the tree” from plastic bottles that fit tightly to each other. We fix them with tape.
Similarly, we create the next tiers of our tree and fix them using tape. We also take into account that with each subsequent tier the diameter of the formed circle decreases. That is, you should get a cone that looks like a New Year's beauty.
The topmost tier of the tree should consist of only one bottle mounted on a metal pipe.
Then you need to decorate the tree properly.
The key disadvantage of this method is that the New Year's beauty turns out to be motionless. Not everyone likes it. Therefore, some craftsmen use the second method, which consists of the following steps:
As in the previous case, we install a central supporting frame from metal pipe using a hammer at the place where the craft is created.
Using electric drill We drill holes in the pipe at the level of each tier of the tree.
IN drilled holes We install a straight wire, the length of which is equal to the diameter of the tier. Then we make a circle from the same wire. Again, the diameter of each is more than high level is reduced so that the end result is a cone.
We make the upper part from a single plastic bottle, which we put on the free end of a metal pipe.
Then we make a hole in the cap of each bottle into which we install a wire hook, which is then fixed on the ring.
By filling each of the tiers of the tree, we get the final result - a New Year's beauty.
At the next stage we decorate the Christmas tree.
Unlike the first case, here the bottles hang on a ring and can move.
Option two: a small Christmas tree on the table
You don’t always need a large Christmas tree made of plastic bottles, as in the previous case. Then you can make petite beauty from a green plastic container with a capacity of 2 liters. The algorithm for making a Christmas tree in this case is as follows:
We retreat about 3 cm from the bottom of the neck of the bottle and use a stationery knife to cut off its upper part.
Then we roll up a sheet of whatman paper and place it in the neck. We fix this entire structure with tape. The frame of the Christmas tree is ready.
At the next stage, cut off the bottom of the container, and cut the rest into rings 3-4 cm wide.
Then we cut the bottom of each ring into thin strips, but leave the top untouched. After this, we cut the ring itself into 2 equal parts and screw it to whatman paper. Don't forget to use tape to secure it. So, step by step, we turn whatman paper into green branches and get a miniature New Year's beauty. We leave the top of the tree sharp and fix it with the same tape.
Another way
In the form of a three-dimensional applique, you can make a Christmas tree from plastic bottles with your own hands (photos of some crafts, by the way, are presented in the review). In this case, we take a sheet of cardboard or whatman paper of the required size as a basis. Then we take 3-4 plastic bottles and mark them in the form of a three-dimensional model of a Christmas tree. For example, these could be triangles or trapezoids. Using stationery scissors and a knife, cut according to the markings of the model. Then we glue them to the base with glue. Then we properly design a sheet of cardboard or whatman paper. When finished, you can add a frame to this craft, and it will become an excellent decoration for your home.
Decorating the craft
Any DIY Christmas tree made from a plastic bottle must be decorated at the final stage. For these purposes, you can use the usual glass toys, garlands, and other available materials. In general, we do not limit the flight of imagination and use everything we deem necessary.
Summary
This article describes three main ways to make a Christmas tree from plastic bottles with your own hands. Each of them is strictly suitable for one specific situation. The simplest is the last, third, which allows you to create a three-dimensional image of a Christmas tree. The most difficult is the first one. It requires a lot of material and is not that easy to implement.
Below should be the most big bottles(2 and 1.5 liter bottles, in the middle there are liter bottles, and at the top there are 0.5 and 0.3 liter bottles. If you have bottles of the same volume, then adjust the length of the “branches” yourself by cutting the strips to required length.
Make a hole in the left bottom, which you secure to the lower end of the stick using a plastic bottle cap (you can hammer a nail in for strength).
Place the last, smallest piece, neck up, on the upper end of the stick and screw the green plug onto the neck, also securing it with a nail for strength.
A little patience, perseverance, effort and the forest beauty is ready!
Such Christmas trees can be used as New Year's decoration your houses!
Method 2. To make such a Christmas tree you need a minimum of time and expense. A master class on making a Christmas tree from plastic bottles will tell you in detail how to make such an original New Year's craft.
To make a decorative New Year's craft: a Christmas tree from plastic bottles, you will need the following:
- Plastic bottles - 3 pcs;
- Scotch;
- A sheet of thick paper, ideally whatman paper (A4);
- Scissors;
| So, cut the bottle as shown in the photo. That is, it is necessary to cut off the bottom and neck so that a straight pipe from the bottle remains. | |
| Next you need to make blanks for the branches. In order for the tree to have a cone-shaped shape, the blanks must have different sizes. That is, you need to achieve the following: | |
| Cut each plastic bottle lengthwise into 3 equal parts and then adjust their sizes so that each subsequent tier is slightly smaller than the previous one. Then each workpiece must be “dissolved into needles.” The neck of one of the bottles will serve as a stand for our future New Year's craft. | |
| The next step is to roll the Whatman paper into a tube. We insert it into the bottleneck... | |
| ...and secure with tape. | |
| Now all that remains is to fix each tier of the tree with tape in a circle and a little New Year's craft: the Christmas tree with your own hands is ready! | |
| You can decorate the top of our New Year's tree with a homemade Christmas tree toy or complete the tree the way we did. |
|
| If you want to make a Christmas tree from plastic bottles more fluffy, like in the photo, when making the Christmas tree, you need to cut the needles as thinly as possible (more often). | |
| By the way, the Christmas tree also looks quite creative with larger “branches” - a maser class from the website Country of Masters. We cut the bottle in the same way as in the previous version into 3 parts. Only we make cuts in a circle towards the center, straight. |
|
| A puncture is made in the center with an awl and the needles are bent up and down in order. A puncture is made in the lid of the cream or mineral water into which a skewer of the required length is inserted. | |
| The parts are strung in descending order, with a large bead placed on top of the glue. The Christmas tree can be decorated with polystyrene foam, rain, etc. | |
| Glue the Christmas tree onto the disk stand. The Christmas tree is ready! |
|
| You can put gifts or plant an animal nearby. These Christmas trees have been a constant success for many years. |
Method 3. And finally, the last option for today is a Christmas tree made from plastic milk bottles (what decorative New Year trees are not made from...). The design is completely collapsible, has the maximum resemblance to the original, does not require particularly complex technologies or specific work skills, there are no problems with bottles either, and a holiday is just around the corner...
Materials and tools
The material for making the Christmas tree is a milk plastic bottle or part of it (Fig. 1). To make a homemade tabletop Christmas tree, you will need 5-20 milk/kefir plastic bottles with corrugation at the bottom. The number of bottles determines the number of branches and tiers. The more branches, the more fluffy the Christmas tree is; the more tiers, the taller it is.
In addition to bottles, you only need scissors and plastic rivet technology
Plastic rivets
To implement the technology of plastic rivets, it is necessary to have a means for melting (installing) the rivets and the rivet itself. You need to manage to melt the head of the rivet using a hot nail or lighter. You can do this in the same way with a well-heated soldering iron. In addition, you will need clamps and tweezers to install rivets in hard to reach places.
For plastic rivets, it is very important to choose the material. After fumbling for about a year, through trial and error, taking into account the requirements of strength and availability, I identified several sources for obtaining plastic rivets:
1. Empty rods from ballpoint pens. Enough available material. They are good because they are colorless and the compound, with their help, turns out to be organically integrated into the product made from plastic bottles. Such a rivet turns out neat, with a round head, however, it has a slightly reduced tensile strength. In addition, the rod from ballpoint pens is round in cross-section and completely fills the drilled hole in the parts being connected. By the way, the walls of the rods come in different thicknesses; for rivets it is better to use rods with thicker walls.
2. Chupa Chups sticks. Similar to option No. 1 only in color. The connection is more cumbersome, and the rivet head melts with difficulty (it either burns, becomes ugly, or unreliable).
3. The most perfect option, and it’s very convenient (I’m giving the world a proposal) to use material from buckets of 3, 5, 10 liters of construction mixtures. There are quite a lot of them left after repairs, and even one lasts for a long time.
From the walls of such a bucket you need to cut a ring, and cut the ring along the generatrix (this is the only way) into strips 2...4 mm wide, length from 4 to 15 cm. These will be the blanks for rivets, and, moreover, the best and most affordable, in almost unlimited quantities quantity.
Obtaining a connection using such rivets is simple. It is more convenient for this to prepare rivets of the required length in advance, melting the head of the plastic rod on one side. To connect two parts with plastic rivets, we overlap the parts, melt them with the same burner, forming a hole of the desired profile and size, insert the rivet there and, by melting, form a head from the opposite end of the rivet rod. After practicing reflowing several times, the head turns out neat and tear-resistant.
Let's get started...
To implement the idea, a source material is required in the form of a part of a plastic milk bottle (Fig. 1a), which is cut along the circumference into two components (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, respectively). A trunk will be formed from the part adjacent to the neck (Fig. 1b), and branches of the future will be cut out from the ring with a central groove (Fig. 1c). Christmas tree. One whole plastic bottle produces two or three rings. The more rings you prepare, the fluffier and taller the Christmas tree you can assemble. I had at least 20 of these rings (10 full bottles).
Plastic rings with a groove in the middle need to be cut into several equal parts (Fig. 2) along the forming elements of the bottle cylinder. As a result, we get convex rectangles. If you cut into 2 parts, then from such long halves you will get long lower branches of the Christmas tree, if you cut into 3 equal parts, you will get branches of medium tiers and medium length, and cutting into 4-5 parts, you get small blanks for the upper tiers of a tabletop Christmas tree . It is not at all necessary to observe particular uniformity in the dimensions of the rectangles for one type of tiers.
Next begins the rather tedious work of forming the branch. From each plastic convex rectangle (Fig. 3a), a wedge-shaped blank should be cut out with scissors (Fig. 3b). The axis of symmetry of the wedge-shaped part should be located along the corrugation groove. Immediately after cutting the workpiece, “needles” should be formed on it, making cuts along the side edges at approximately 45 degrees to the groove and radially at the end of the “branch”. (Fig. 3c). The needles are alternately moved out from the plane of the workpiece, also at 45 degrees to each other. Placing the needles up and down relative to the plane of the branch provides fluffiness to the Christmas tree.
As a result of such painstaking work, several sets (Fig. 4) of branches are obtained different sizes for desktop homemade Christmas tree. Cutting branches and then needles is quite a long task, but you can entrust this to your family as part of a collective creativity to decorate life under New Year. It should be noted that it is difficult to accurately determine the number of branches forming a specific tier by eye, so you should always have several rings in stock (Fig. 1c) for cutting branches during the installation of tiers
The place for attaching branches is the trunk, which consists of several parts (logs). The top parts of plastic bottles (Fig. 1b) were considered waste during the separation of the rings (Fig. 1c), but now they are also used in tree making to create a trunk. The base of the trunk and the lower log is the full neck part of a plastic bottle (Fig. 5a). The upper logs are assembled from blanks obtained by cutting off the threaded part of a milk bottle with a flange, as well as removing a segment of plastic along the generatrices (Fig. 5b, 5c). The segments need to be rolled into a tube and secured on both sides with plastic rivets. In a similar way, it is necessary to create several logs to attach tiers of branches. In my case, these are 3 logs, but there could be more or less. For a miniature Christmas tree, 3-4 tiers of branches on just one log are enough.
Naturally, the diameter of the trunk should taper towards the top of the tabletop tree and the diameter of the upper log should be smaller than the lower one. The larger the cut of the segment, the higher the log obtained from the conical top of the plastic bottle. For the top you need a half segment, and for the middle part about two-thirds of the whole neck (Fig. 5b). The diameter of the lower hole of the upper log should be approximately 1 mm larger than the upper hole of the lower log forming the trunk.
It's time to attach the branches to the "logs". Each log will need to place 2-3 tiers of branches. The small number of tiers does not allow effectively covering the rivet heads with branches, and a large number of spoils the aesthetic appearance of the Christmas tree. In each tier of this design you can install from 4 to 10 branches. Fastening is carried out using plastic rivets, since you will need quite a lot of plastic rivets, it is better to prepare them for future use. The easiest way is to place the branches in tiers on the lower logs (Fig. 6), since the neck of the plastic bottle is wide enough and it is convenient to hold the plastic rivet with inside finger.
If you place the branches closely along the circumference of the tier, then one rivet is enough to attach the branch to the trunk (Fig. 6-8). For those who like greater reliability, they can install two rivets side by side. The tiers of branches must be formed like the roof deck of a house - from the bottom up, then the branches of the upper tier will cover the rivets of the lower one and the heads of the rivets will be completely invisible.
In my case, in the lower (Fig. 6) and middle (Fig. 7) log of the trunk there are 2 tiers of branches, and in the upper one - 3 (Fig. 8). There are 5 tiers of branches in total. It’s quite enough to look amazingly similar to a real tree. Installation of plastic rivets on the upper tier, due to its small diameter, should be done using tweezers or a medical clamp.
After securing all tiers on all logs, you can begin final assembly. But first it is advisable to decide on the top. In my case, without thinking for a long time, I built the top using the same technology as the trunk (Fig. 5), that is, by rolling the plastic into a cone. But you can do this in another way, for example, in the form of an asterisk or a ball (I like the cone better). The top of the tree is attached to the upper element of the trunk also using a rivet, installed from the inside and melted from the outside. The upper part of the trunk, together with the top, is itself a miniature tabletop Christmas tree (Fig. 9). You can install it on your monitor and enhance the holiday feeling...
A living Christmas tree grows from the bottom up, in the same order, and we collect logs with tiers of branches by adding “logs” (Fig. 10) to the already existing Christmas tree. It is better to connect the trunk elements together in a place covered by a branch, at three points along the circumference of the trunk. In this case, the trunk becomes rigid and will not break if the Christmas tree accidentally falls to the floor from the table, the Christmas tree is a tabletop one...
And if you insert a dynamic light part (for example, a garland) inside the Christmas tree, then New Year's Eve she will amaze those around her with her charm:
Here is such a master class. Of course, it’s a little complicated, but what a beauty it turns out!
