I created an art deco inspired Christmas tree this year. It is made out of fringe and embroidery hoops. I added lights to finish the effect.
My original inspiration for this project was this beautiful chandelier that I found online. I loved the layers of it, and the streams of light coming down in multiple points.
This project originally came about because our fake tree that we have had for over 17 years finally died.
We loved the fake tree as it was very full and realistic looking, but last year there was more needles on the ground then there was on the branches and we ended up finally getting rid of it.
When this Christmas rolled around and we didn’t have a tree we thought about just purchasing another fake tree, but given the option to do whatever we wanted I thought it might be fun to create something artistic and different. It was a fun project and different from the normal Christmas tree that we have every year. It didn’t cost very much money or time to create and it’s some thing I feel great leaving up for a little bit past Christmas time.
We’ve even talked about letting future years carry this tradition forward. I thought it might be fun to let each family member have a turn, creating their own tree out of whatever materials they want.
Although my youngest daughter mentioned:
“OK if I have the choice, I’m going to just going to be buying a tree from the store.”
I don’t blame her it’s not for everyone, but it was a really fun project to accomplish.
I’m going to break down the steps for you below. I’ll explain how I made everything incase you wanted to create something similar for yourself as a lamp or art installation.
Here we go!
Materials
- Fringe Doorway curtains
- Embroidery Hoops in various sizes
- Hot Glue
- Glue Gun
- LED puck lights
- Lamp Cords
- Fishing Line
- Cardboard
- Scissors
- Teacup Hooks for hanging
Step 1: Cutting the cardboard
In this step, I used the embroidery hoops to make the shape for the cardboard cut out.
I removed the outside hoop of the embroidery hoop that had the little metal fastener on it. I use the inside hoop, which was a solid wooden frame and laid it on top of a piece of scrap cardboard. I used two different sizes of embroidery hoops to give some variation in the overall effect but you could use the same size everywhere. The two different sizes are used for 4 inch and 6 inch hoops.
Using a pencil, I traced the shape of the embroidery hoop onto the cardboard. Then used my scissors to cut the circle out of the cardboard, I cut it to the outside of the shape not the inside.
After this, I used my hot glue and attached the wooden embroidery hoop to the cardboard piece I just cut out. It should fit perfectly to the edge of the embroidery hoop and not hang over at all. If you accidentally got a few spots that hang over, just use your scissors and trim the excess off.
( I took it a step further and covered one side of the carboard with white cardstock paper just for aesthetics is not necessary to do this step. You could also paint it if you were worried about the way that I looked. )
Step 2: Doorway Fringe
Next I used the doorway fringe that I ordered online. I used white and found many other options that could be beautiful for this project. I also bought gold, but ended up not using them, but might use them later for some thing else.
I kept the doorway fringe at the full length, because I knew that I would be trimming them later. I attached the fringe to the embroidery hoop, using hot glue.
I put hot glue on the outside of the embroidery hoop, and carefully went around, attaching the fringe as I went.
I overlaped the ends just slightly to make sure there was no gaps. I ended up going through four doorway fringe packages. I made 14 hoops total.
Step 3: Tying the fishing line
After I completed all of the hoops, I tied on some fishing line around the embroidery hoops, fishing it through the fringe as needed. This is what is going to hang them from the ceiling.
I made 5 separate tie points, tying them together in a knot in the middle that would extend up to one long string. I kept these strings very long, because I knew that I was going to adjust the heights once I started hanging. I first tried this way tying the fishing line before gluing the fringe, and it didn’t work with the cardboard… So I ended up doing this step later… which is why I placed it after the fringe in the article, but don’t have a photo of it…
Step 4: Hanging the hoops to the ceiling
I placed tea cup hooks into my ceiling. I like these ones because they were already white and would blend in more than any metal ones. They also would cause the least amount of damage since they were small.
Using the fishing line, I hung the lamps from the hooks on the ceiling, creating a knot to go over each hook. I adjusted the lengths as needed and cut off the excess fishing line as I went along.
Step 5: Adding lights
For two of the hoops I ended up using a lamp cord and the rest I used puck lights from Amazon.
I originally had planned to use ALL lamp cords and have an all white tree. Soon it got very messy having a lot of cords dripping around everywhere to try to get the effect, and I ran out of plug-ins.
So after lots of research (and even considering wiring my own multi cord octopus lamp together) I opted for a battery powered, peel and stick puck lights.
It made the lighting of this tree, much, much easier.
A fun feature of these puck lights is that they are color changing and can be operated using a remote. You can push them on and off like a puck light usually would turn on and off, but it is also bluetooth battery operated. You can set timers and color changing options on those puck lights.
I really really liked these lights and wish I would have thought of them a little bit sooner instead of the lamp cord option. Since the lamp cords were using regular bulbs, I had two white streams of light and the rest could be color changed. Eventually, my husband was super smart (and thoughtful) and bought me two smart bulbs to go into the lamp cord hoops.
This made it so that we could change all of the different hoops to be whatever color we wanted. I really liked that.
I was able to melt the colors through different variations and they would slowly fade through a rainbow of colors. They looked really fun from the outside of the house too.
The battery life on these puck lights was longer than I expected and although a few of them died after being on for several nights, it wasn’t too expensive to just replace a few AAA batteries.
Step 6: Give it a haircut
This is the final step is making it look the way you want. I just used my scissors, gathered the fringe at the bottoms and gave it a straight across cut. You could vary the lengths of the stands on each lamp giving it more of a organic edge. I opted for simple straight edges, but this part is totally adjustable for whatever look you want.
I like the overall aesthetic of it and thought the nod to art deco- fringe light fixtures, and chandeliers was a fun addition to our art deco house.
I think for the future I might use a few of these hoops, as a light installation in the corner and store of the rest. I think it’s a fun, elegant craft that honestly wasn’t very expensive.
Let me know what you think below and if you have tried, or are going to try some thing like this!
Thanks for being here.
-Amanda