Eco Friendly Home Projects

Before I learned how to make mince pies, we used to buy them from the shops, and have kept the packaging boxes which I knew will come in handy one day. The red colour and the festive patterned borders on the box can be used for making any Christmas decor. So we thought we'd make a Christmas wreath out of them. I cut the boxes into short 4-5-cm strips and stick them in a random crisscross pattern to make a circle, with cellophane tapes. I've also used some left over old sequins (taken off from an old bag), an old red ribbon, and a "Happy Christmas" wording cut out from an old Christmas card. Easy peasy.

All these preparation for Christmas just reminded me of the very first handmade Christmas tree I made back in 1988, when I was still a college student living with 6 other college mates in a rented property. I was staying in the house all by myself as all my friends have gone home for the holiday and I really wanted to have a tree so I decided to make one (that was all that I could afford to do). I made mine out of some used mounting boards but you can try with any big cardboard box. Unfortunately there isn't any photograph taken (there was no digital camera so we had to really be careful not to waste our films on non assignment related stuff) but I've drawn some diagrams to show the process. 1. Cut the board into 4 equal shapes like this: 2. Mark 3 places where you will put support in for the tree (x, y, z points shown below), measure the width and cut 3 circles with radius the same as x, y, and z respectively. Cut a 2mm thick slot into the boards as shown below: Do not cut the...