Good morning! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The holiday season was so fun, fast and busy that it’s hard to believe I’m only now sharing my second artificial Christmas tree project: Outdoor Christmas Snowflakes from Artificial Christmas Trees!
At least it is the perfect time to frugally get the artificial Christmas trees needed for the project. Friends and neighbors might be evaluating and discarding old trees to get new ones (hopefully on sale!). Maybe you can find one at a thrift store. Or maybe you have your own old tree to recycle into Outdoor Christmas Snowflakes!
Just like the first artificial Christmas tree project, Recycled Garland, I used parts from a free artificial Christmas tree. I was super excited to get the huge box of Christmas tree parts, though surprisingly, there was only 1 trunk. The husband was not as excited, especially when I had piles leftover after the garland project.
Thankfully, I saved the extra artificial tree parts long enough to make Outdoor Snowflakes.
For the Largest Snowflake, I connected 6 medium sized branches from the artificial tree. Some of them had branches, which made great lines for the snowflake.
My original idea was to hook all the branches using the wired twigs already on them, just like I did for the porch garland. It worked great for the arches on the porch, they survived the wind and the snow (mainly wind-I am still wishing for more snow!).
Since the snowflakes all met at a center point-it didn’t work as well as the garland. The top and bottom ones were fine, but I didn’t have enough twigs to securely attach the side parts of the snowflake. It flopped and bent when I tried to pick it up.
Wiring the 6 pieces at the center worked great. Of course, it didn’t look pretty- I just wound the wire randomly around the pieces. There was plenty of green branches to hide my strong, but messy, wiring job, though.
The final step was fun! I moved and straightened all the little twigs and branches until it looked like a snowflake. Connecting some of the little twigs, between the 6 large pieces, did make the snowflake sturdier- and helped the pieces to not sag.
For the Medium Snowflake and the Small Snowflake, I overlapped 3 branches at the center instead of joining 6 at the center. This was easier to wire together than the Large Snowflake, though the greenery still hid all my wires.
Overlapping just 3 branches also solved the sagging problem that I created with the 6 separate branches. But all 3 snowflakes were easy and fun to make.
So easy that I could have coffee outside as I worked. In a few places, I added spare branches to cover up wires-usually at the ends where they originally attached to the tree.
This year, I decorated the snowflakes with painted pine cones and red berries. Next year, I hope to add more pine cones, ribbon or maybe some thrift store ornaments.
One snowflake was spray painted white, like the snowflakes I wish we had. It blends into the fence so much, that I’m glad it’s only the small snowflake. But, they all did a great job decorating our otherwise plain fence for the holidays!
The Outdoor Snowflakes from an Artificial Christmas Tree was such an easy, fun project! It took less than an afternoon (though a whole pot of coffee) and it was a great, frugal way to decorate our fence for the holidays! Hopefully, I can find more projects for the free artificial Christmas tree-before the husband can get it in the dumpster!
Happy Camping (or wishing for real snow!)
Frugal Campasaurus