Paint Sample Christmas Trees

Last night we had "Girls' Time Out" at our church--we shared appetizers and recipes, chatted, made some Christmas ornaments. Well, I LOVED the ornaments we made. We made paper Finnish Stars, which were pretty hard. We made fabulous chipboard birds which we decorated with scrapbook paper and glittery accents. But the one I brought home for my kids to try was this: paint sample Christmas trees.

 

 

One note: Please don't go clean out the paint store of their paint samples.  You might ask whether they have any that have been discontinued, or if you can have a few.  Seems to me they really don't care, but you don't want to wipe them out of green!

All you need:
A few paint sample strips demonstrating shades of green (one per ornament)
Brown and yellow paint chips (for the trunk and star on top--you probably only need one of each)
Star punch (or cut star free hand)
Strip of ribbon for hanger
Decorations to glue on. We used buttons at church; for my kids, foam ornament shapes that came out of a Christmas foam craft I'd tucked away.
Glue (we used a glue gun with the buttons at church, but white glue worked just as well for the lighter decorations)

To make the craft:

1) Cut a triangle from the green paint sample. I used one of the white lines that separated the green swatches as my bottom line of the triangle, and then cut a nice tall triangle.  (Lily cut her own; I just drew a line to cut along on the back of the paint swatch.)

2) Cut a brown tree stump from your brown swatch

3) Punch a star from a yellow (or light green) swatch--you could also cut freehand or use a foam star or other decoration instead

4) Have your kids glue the star at the top of the tree (Lily then embellished hers with foam stars)

5) Then glue the stump at the bottom

6) Decorate

7) When you are finished, loop a ribbon and glue to the back of the ornament, right behind the star.

Cute, easy, fun!