finemotor Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

While looking for craft featuring pipes for my 11^th Day of Christmas post, I came across directions for a folded Jewish shofar. Just before following the last step of the directions the folded paper creation looked like it could be an pleated or folded Christmas tree. Why not make a set of handmade Christmas cards with these pretty trees glued to the front of them? These handmade Christmas cards could be used as gift tags or cards we gave to friends.

How to Make the Handmade Christmas Cards

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The folding of origami paper to make the trees is super simple. My son and I sat down one afternoon after school and make a bunch of them.

Let me walk you through how to make the origami Christmas trees:

Start by folding the paper in half forming two large triangles.

Then open the paper back up so it looks like a box or a square.

Fold the left corner into the fold you created in the middle of the paper. (Just the way you would complete the first fold when you make a paper airplane.) Repeat this step with the right corner of the paper.

Fold the point at the bottom of your paper up about ½ inch. This will give you a flat base at the bottom of your tree. Tuck the triangle beneath the side folds. It will make the tree folding easier.

With the back of the paper showing fold the bottom of the tree down about 1/4 of an inch. Then flip the paper over and fold the bottom of the tree down a 1/8 of an inch to create a pleat. Continue creating pleats with this process until you get within an inch of the top of the tree.

Leave the point of the tree unfolded. This will leave you with a flat area to place the star on.

The fun thing about the pleats on the tree is that they allow you to keep your tree compact or stretch it out.

Adding Tree to Christmas Cards

Once we had the trees just as we wanted them, we glue them to red construction paper using a glue stick. Liquid glue or glue dots would be great alternatives to a glue stick if you have them. The key to gluing to to hold the pleats in place with one hand and glue with the other. (These handmade Christmas cards need both hands to create them.) With the tree on cards we were now ready to decorate the trees. We just added stars to the top of the trees and a trunk to the bottom of the trees. I think you could draw or cutout our ornaments for your trees if you like. You could also use holiday themed stickers.

Adding Messages to Our Handmade Christmas Cards

In keeping with the hand made theme you could have your children write a message inside the handmade Christmas cards. You could also compose messages on the computer and print them out. The printed out messages could be trimmed and glued inside the card.

You may also want your children to write their name or draw a picture on the back of the card. Hallmark puts their company name and a crown on theirs. Your handmade Christmas card creator could do the same thing to theirs.