Rustic DIY Christmas Card Display Tree

With Christmas and New Year’s fast approaching, the holiday cards are beginning to arrive.  Every year I struggle to find the best way to display all the holiday cards without making the display area look cluttered or messy.  I have tried a few easy and cheap ideas I found on Pinterest, but none of them were as pretty or organized as I would like them to be, so I decided to build a card display tree out of wood!  It’s rustic, yet organized and pretty (at least I think so 😉 ).

It only took about an hour to build, so it’s quick and easy too!  The entire card display tree is made out of 1×3 boards.  Here are the materials needed:

Materials:

• 4 – 1×3 @ 6′
• wood glue
• wood filler
• 1 1/4″finish nails
• Nail gun (Ryobi Airstrike Finish nailer works great) or hammer
• Kreg jig
• 1 1/4″ pocket hole screws
• Drill
• glue gun and glue sticks
• bulldog clips

Cut List:

• 1 – 1×3 @ 60″
• 1 – 1×3 @ 44 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 39 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 34 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 29 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 24 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 19 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 1 – 1×3 @ 3 1/2″ long end to long end (each end cut at a 45 degree angle)
• 4 – 1×3 @ 6″

First, cut all the 1×3 pieces, using the cut list above.

Next, drill two 3/4″ pocket holes into one end of each of the four 6″ 1×3 boards.

Then, attach a 6″ board to the front and back side of the bottom of the 60″ board using wood glue and 1 1/2″ pocket hole screws (the pocket hole screws should be on the bottom- these pieces make up the stand). Attach the remaining two 6″ pieces to each side of the 60″ board using wood glue and 1 1/2″ pocket hole screws.

Next, evenly space the 1×3 boards along the 60″ board, with the longest board at the bottom and then adding the boards in decreasing length with the shortest at the top.  The bottom board is 8 inches from the bottom, and the top board is 2″ from the top of the 60″ board (the trunk) and the remaining boards are spaced evenly between.  Attach each board using wood glue and finish nails.  Finally,  add the 3 1/2″ triangle to the top of the 60″ board, using wood glue to attach.  Once all the boards are attached, the tree should look like this:

I filled in all of the small holes from the nail gun with wood filler, and once dry, I sanded the tree and stained with Minwax Dark Walnut stain.

I had some plastic, glittery large snowflakes left over from my daughter’s Frozen birthday party earlier this year.  I had purchased a pack of 25 of them at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.

I then glued two of them together using a hot glue gun to make a fuller-looking snowflake.

I then glued the snowflakes to the top of the tree (using a hot glue gun), immediately above the top tier.

I had a box of small bulldog clips left over from other projects.

Using a hot glue gun,  I glued bulldog clips to each tier of the tree, evenly spacing them out on each tier.  I glued 3 on the top tier, 4 on the next one down, and adding one more clip per tier.

Lastly, clip your holiday cards to the tree and enjoy!  This piece is rather large to  store, so I may remove the top snowflake and instead of using glue, use velcro to attach it.  Then during the non-holiday season, I could put a sign on top of the tree advertising it as my daughter’s artwork tree and use it to display my daughter’s artwork.  It will be an artwork tree for January through November and a holiday card display tree in December.  Awesome, right!? 🙂

Here are some more pics of the card display tree (so far we only have one card for the current holiday season but I know more are on the way):