Condo Blues: How to Make Your Christmas Tree Look Fuller

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

How to Make Your Christmas Tree Look Fuller

In addition to our family’s main Christmas tree, my husband and I decorate the upstairs landing with my hand me down (formerly) single gal Christmas tree.

Our little Christmas tree is starting to show its age. The pine needles are in a perpetual state of squished and refuse to fluff.  When one of the branches snapped off in my hand this year, I thought it was time to retire it after many years of service.

But with a dose of Christmas magic in disguise as a few decorating hacks I made our scrawny tree look full and gave it new continued life!
 

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You can use these Christmas tree decorating ideas for both live and artificial Christmas trees although obviously you won’t be able to fluff and adjust the branches of a live tree like a fake one. Either type of Christmas tree will allow you to shove a broken Christmas tree branch back into the tree to fill a hole. Guess how I know?

How to Fill Holes and Make a Full and Fluffy Christmas Tree in Six Easy Steps or Less!

1. Fluff the Christmas tree branches and needles. The more time you take to fluff the tree branches to fill the holes the less time and materials you will need to fill and hide the holes in between the branches. On a good day I’ll put the main tree up in the living room, give it a good ol’ initial fluff, and come back to fluffing the tree here and there as I pass it while I am going about my day. Most of the time I’m too inpatient to do that and frankly that fluffing technique is not going to help  our sad little Charlie Brown tree but Step 2 will!

 2. Wrap green artificial  rope Christmas pine garland (it looks like this) in between the layers of tree branches to hide the fake tree trunk. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience)  The idea is to wrap, or in some cases cut and stuff, green garland in between the tree branches and/or to hide the visual hole where the tree branches and tree trunk meet.  You don’t have to spend a ton of money on this garland for your tree because it is background hole camouflage. Put your money, time, and effort into the stars of the decorating show in Steps 4 – 7.




Looking a little less scrawny Charlie Brown Christmas tree but we're just getting started!


3. String lights on your Christmas tree if desired. Our main tree is pre lit so this step is a moot point. I skip with the tiny tree since it is in a hallway.

4. String pretty garland or ribbon on the outside branches of the Christmas tree if desired. This is garland you want people to notice so put your time, money, and effort into it. The placement of the showy garland is a work in process too. We will shift it around as needed during Steps 5 and 6.


 My bell garland is discontinued but you can buy a similar jingle bell Christmas garland here if you like.

5. Add big hole filling Christmas ornaments. This is where you can have some fun and repurpose damaged decorations into new Christmas tree decorations!


 Sprong!

Let your imagination go wild! Here are some Christmas tree hole filler decorations ideas:
  • Big ribbon bows – I always use the entire spool to make wired bows. I take them apart and store them on the cardboard spools after the holiday so I can use them as something else like ribbon garland in following year.

  • Floral picks and repurposed silk flowers – I recycled the you can buy single silk poinsettia flower picks here from a Christmas decoration I had. I bought the springy floral picks after spending way too much time playing with them in the store instead of buying the ribbon I went to buy. I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I am 8.

A video posted by Lisa (@condoblues) on

  • Large ornaments
Paper mache unicorns in Elizabethan clothing. I got a new Elizabethan animal ornament every year as a Christmas present until I collected the set.
  • Pine, holly, etc. tree branches – Real or fake. Adding a few real pine branches to an artificial tree gives you the smell of real pine without using synthetic scents. Of course if you are allergic to pine or nature in general *sadly raises hand* this last tip may not be for you.

6. Decorate the rest of the tree with your favorite Christmas ornaments – This year I’m going with a Whimsy Fun Christmas decoration theme because I think we need to rediscover fun and love after everything 2016 threw at us (why David Bowie, why?!)

 The Santa hat Christmas Tree Topper (you can find a similar one here) does double duty. If the hat isn’t decorating the top of our Christmas tree it is on my head when Santa asks me to be his Christmas Elf and take charity Santa pet photos. Best. Gig. Ever!


Looking for more Christmas tree decorating ideas? Check out the following options - and more! - below!


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1 comment :

Teresa B said...

Thank you for sharing the tips at The Really Crafty link Party.
I sometimes wish I had this problem, but our tree actually looks too full, because the kids want to hang literally every piece of decor they find - and when those are not enough, they make more themselves :)

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