A Frame Ornament Tree

Look out Crate and Barrel, I copied your Christmas tree ornament display thingy. Don't worry, I still love you anyway.

 

As soon as I saw the original at my local C&B I instantly thought I could make one myself. So I pinned it for later and quickly forgot about it. It only came back on my radar while we were finalizing our Xmas shopping. See, we usually get Matt's mom one of those fancy Swarovski crystal snowflake ornaments for Xmas and I thought this would be a nice way to display them. So with two days to spare I started this last minute project. The supply list is pretty short; a 1x2x8" board, 2 small dowels, and some stain. I already had some poly, nails and screws.

To make the triangle I cut the angles at the top of my tree, both of which are 45 degree angles, on a miter saw. Then, I laid my bottom piece along the bottom and used a t-square thing to level it out based on the inner and top most points. Once it looked good I marked my cut lines and ended up with this.

 

 

Now that my tree shape was established I needed to plan out where the ornaments would rest. I eyeballed this process as well by laying a dowel, tracing it with a pencil, and using ornaments to help figure out spacing. Once I knew where I wanted my dowels to cross I marked the center of my boards.

 

 

To drill my holes I started out with my drill perpendicular to the board like so.

 

 

But once the hole was started I repositioned my drill so that it was roughly at the same angle as my lines were. I started with a smaller drill bit and then bumped up to the one that was closest to my dowel size.

 

 

Now that all my holes were drilled at roughly the same angles I slid my dowels in and marked my cut lines.

 

 

After cutting my dowels and glueing them into place I secured the first two pieces of my triangle together with some wood glue and two shots from my nail gun. After that my base was somehow a little smaller than what I started out with. No problem, I just lined one side up so it was flush with the side and marked where I needed to cut on the other end.

 

 

With the board cut to the correct size I attached it to the rest of the tree with screws up from the bottom, that way you won't see them. Now for ornament placement. I used our dremel tool to create little notches in the dowels to indicate where you should hang ornaments, and to keep them from sliding to one side or the other if they happen to be on hooks. The dremel notches were not exactly pretty, so I smoothed them out with some sand paper wrapped around some scrap dowel.

 

 

Now sand, stain, poly and add a little base and you're left with this!

 

 

I need to make one for our house now.

 

 

Oh, and how many of you had a Miley on your tree this year?

 

Nikki Kelly