Unique DIY Wooden Christmas Tree With Knobs On

DIY Wooden Christmas Tree Made From Architectural Salvage

I can’t walk past a skip (dumpster) without having a good look in. I especially love odd bits of wood with interesting moldings or hooks and knobs on them. Over the last year, I managed to gather quite a collection of this Architectural salvage. I needed to do something with it, that’s when I got the idea for a DIY wooden Christmas tree
 
I love a flat Christmas tree, last year I made a stylish branch DIY Christmas tree. This looked great in my front room and didn’t take up half as much space as a real Christmas tree.
 
As much as I love a real Christmas tree we don’t really have the room for one. Flat Christmas trees just don’t take up as much space.
 
I still have my branch Christmas tree but I thought it would be fun to have another flat Christmas tree in the dining room this time. I really enjoyed making another flat Christmas tree this year. This DIY wooden Christmas tree is very different as it has knobs and hooks and is made from architectural salvage.
 
I think that the knobs look like Christmas ornaments in themselves especially the coloured ones. The tree can be simply hung on the wall or you can make a stand for it and have it free standing.
 

 
 
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What you need to make a DIY wooden Christmas tree

• Scraps of wood – I used bits of skirting board and architrave because of it’s attractive moldings. I also used some old wooden coat racks and pallet wood scraps. Use whatever you can find. The longest branch was aproximately 3ft

 

 
 

• Old knobs, hooks and general ironmongery

   
  

 
 

• A piece of wood for the tree trunk aprox 4″(10cm) by 4ft(120cm)
• Annie Sloan Antibes Green Chalk Paint
• Spray paint in various colours – or any left over paint in various colours
• Annie Sloan Dark Furniture Wax
• Crackle Medium
• Reciprocating Saw (or handsaw)
• Drill
• Woodscrews
• Screwdrivers
• Copper string lights

How to make a DIY wooden Christmas tree

1. The first thing to do is to gather up all your wood scraps and lay them out on the ground to work out how the Christmas tree will look. Put the smaller pieces of the wood at the top.
    
   

 

2. To achieve a typical Christmas tree shape using a sharpie, mark where you will need to saw your wood planks. So that the ends, slope. Using a reciprocating saw if you have one, saw along the sharpie lines.
    
   Don’t worry if you don’t have an electric saw you can always do this bit by hand but it will just take a little longer.
    
3. Before screwing your Christmas tree together paint the wood. However, before painting, you can brush a Crackle Medium onto the wood to give a more rustic finished look to the wood. For the paint, I used Annie Sloan chalk paint in Antibes green.
    
   To add to the aged wood effect I finished it off with a coating of Annie Sloan dark wax. Stain the wooden trunk dark brown using the dark wax.

 

4. Prepared the knobs and hooks, by scraping away any excess rust from the metal painting the wooden ones. I just used what spray paints I had in my craft cupboard to paint the wooden knobs but you can use any leftover paints you have.
    
   

 
 

5. The placement of the knobs and hooks may look random but they weren’t quite. Lay the painted wood branches down on the ground and then place the knobs and hooks where you think they look best. Then taking one branch at a time, screw the knobs and hooks into place.
    
   
    
   
    

 

6. Lay the trunk flat on the ground and starting with the top, one by one screw the branches of the Christmas tree to the trunk. I used 2 screws per branch.

 

 
 

 

 
 
The original plan was to hang decorations from the all the knobs and hooks of my flat DIY wood Christmas tree. However, the knobs and hooks are like Christmas ornaments in themselves so I think I might just leave the tree as is, and hang my decorations elsewhere.
 

 

 

 
 

 
 

 
 
I love my flat Christmas trees as you can just hang them or lean them against the wall, taking up very little space. You might want to check out the stylish branch Christmas tree I made last year.
 

 
 

 
How many Christmas trees do you have in your home?
 
 
For more repurposed and DIY wood projects visit the DIYideacentre.