Faux Tobacco Stick Christmas Trees

You’ve seen tobacco stick stars, but have you seen tobacco stick Christmas trees? How about faux tobacco stick Christmas trees? You won’t believe what these are made from! *Hint, hint* It’s not wood!

I have been wanting a tobacco stick star for years, and I finally broke down and bought one this fall. I can’t wait to add some Christmas lights to it and set it up with our outdoor decor this holiday season! Something new I’ve been seeing around here at barn sales and flea markets are tobacco stick Christmas trees. They are darling! And I decided to try my hand at making some miniature ones myself. BUT I didn’t have access to tobacco sticks. So I made some knock offs!

FloraCraft® Make It: Fun came out with their 2016 Holiday E-Book and challenged their team members to recreate something in it in our own style. There are some beautiful faux wood stars in the book made from sheets of foam so I used a similar technique to make these Christmas trees.

Take a 1/2″ sheet of FloraCraft® Make It: Fun foam and cut ten 1″x12″ rectangles.

Cover the top and all four sides with a coat of Smooth Finish. Allow to dry for a couple of hours. If you have an faux wood grain embossing folder or stamp, gently press on top of the Smooth Finish to emboss the pattern on it. If you DON’T have a faux wood grain pattern to use, you can draw one on the Smooth Finish by hand using a stylus or embossing tool.

Allow the Smooth Finish to continue to dry for several more hours. Once completely cured, sand all of the edges and top smooth with a very fine grit sandpaper. Round the edges to mimic the look of a worn tobacco stick. In the bottom photo above, the 3 sticks on the left have not been sanded and the 3 on the right have.

Tobacco sticks typically have a grayish brown to light brown coloring to them. To mimic this I combined 3 Americana paint colors: Cocoa (2 parts), Slate Grey (1 part), and Espresso (a few drops). To be sure I had an ultra matte look to the paint I added in Chalk Finish Medium from DecoArt (1 part medium to 2 parts paint). The medium gives any paint that ultra matte look of chalk paint.

After giving all of the sticks a good coat of paint, I went back and very lightly dry brushed some of the Espresso paint on all of the sticks. This helps to make the wood grain pattern stand out and give the sticks dimension.

Next up is assembly! Two sticks will act as the two sides of the tree. Trim the piece that will be the base and save the part you cut off to use as garland on the tree.

Cut a toothpick into thirds and insert each piece into the edge of a tobacco stick. Use Styro Glue or a hot glue gun on each toothpick then attach all of the sticks together.

Go back and add the “garland” to the back of the tree with more toothpicks and glue. With ten sticks, you have enough to make 3 trees with 1 stick left over. Cut up the final stick into 3 pieces and use as the 2nd garland swag on each tree.

Paint exposed foam ends of the trees.

You can wrap the trees in lights or even hang mini ornaments on them!

How fun are these?? I am loving how they turned out. I can’t wait to add them to my Christmas decor!

Do you think you need some faux tobacco stick Christmas trees? Would you try this method?

 

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