December Decorations-Mini Trees

I needed some fillers for my shelf, and I had seen this really cut project that a friend did on Instagram where she spray painted plastic spoons and glued them onto a cone to make Christmas trees. So I was going to do that as well. I was standing in line to check out at the craft store, and was contemplating whether I needed to rethink this idea and find a different one that was easier when I looked up and saw all these cupcake liners on a display rack. Sometimes things just hit you like a lightning bolt once you see it, and that's what happened to me. It dawned on me that using those liners would be way easier and equally as cute as the spoon idea. So I gave up my space in line to go pick some liners. I already had some Styrofoam trees in my cart so I just kept those. (In hindsight, since liners are pretty lightweight, I could have made my own cones out of poster board for cheaper.)

When I got home, I had an idea in my head of how I was going to do it but I wanted to see how other people did theirs because I knew I couldn't be the first person to think of this idea. I looked up some projects on Pinterest but just decided to do it my own way. I'm sure it's not incredibly unique but I think it's simple so hopefully it well help you :)

So one problem that I ran into when I got home was that I realized that the cones had a flat top inside of a pointed one (is it technically a cone then??) So I made a cone for the top by cutting a circle from a piece of card stock paper (for extra durability). Then I cut a section out of the circle so it looked like Pac Man.

I had to trim it down a bit so it would fit evenly with the cone but it wasn't too hard at all. I secured it with hot glue to the top.

 LOL it kind of looks like the Washington Memorial :)

I thought it would be easier to cut a single liner into four parts and hot glue it on like that but I soon realized that was silly, and what would I ever use these liners for? I'm not one to bake cupcakes that often anyway much less ones for the holidays so might as well use them all and not worry about left overs. This is what I came up with:

I took one liner and folded it in half, and then folded it in half again.

(One thing that you might want to do is add a drop of glue to the open part along the side. But that's just my OCD kicking in.)

Then I glued them on with the hot glue, starting with the bottom first. 

On the second layer, I didn't line the pointed top with the bottom layer pointed top. I lined up the second layer point in between two bottom layer top points. (I know there is a term for that but I can't think of it right now....) It gave it more of a random look than uniform. 

(Different cone from the earlier picture which showed the top I made for it but this is just to show you what the layers look like as you go.) I had to tuck and glue a few stray pieces but that's something you'll figure out along the way.

I really liked the red striped pattern a lot. The pattern on the liner already had a sort of swirl to it so it looked way cool once I started layering them up. For picture purposes I left the top undone so you could see it. The final top piece should only require about 3-4 liners, and you glue them to the paper cone just like you would the rest of the cone.

My top turned out kind of ugly so I made a star to go on top. I cut out a star from card stock paper and used a metallic gold pen to color it.

And they're done! They turned out really cute, and I loved them! The top on the green one turned out better so I left that one alone. They're really lightweight and the benefit of the Styrofoam is that will hold up better in storage than poster board. Now I have to put up my decorations because Christmas is over :(