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Paper Christmas Tree Craft: Free Christmas Tree Template

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Three colorful paper Christmas trees made with blue, teal, and green paper stand in front of a festive background.

Every year I love to let Christmas come alive with colorful Christmas projects that can double as decor for your home or tree. Last year I did my first take on my 3D paper Christmas tree and this year, I am going for round two with this ornate DIY paper Christmas tree craft!

I made a special set of Christmas pine needles as SVG cut files that can be used to create an almost realistic small Christmas tree from paper! This Christmas tree template is a must to use with your cutting machine because of how intricate the details. I’m convinced if you tried to hand cut this, your hand will fall off, and that’s a liability issue for me. Just kidding. But seriously, you will want a cutting machine.

These templates are totally free for your personal use in my free craft resource library! And this project is perfect for a tablescape display for your home of holiday gathering!

A collage of two stacked images show colorful paper Christmas trees made with teal, blue, and green paper. Text in the center of the image says "DIY Paper Christmas Trees, Free SVG cut files"

Supplies Needed to Make Colorful Paper Christmas Trees

Here are the supplies you will need to make this paper Christmas tree craft.

  • Foam tree bases in various sizes (find them at craft stores as well)
  • Christmas tree template (find them at the bottom of the post for free!)
  • 65 pound cardstock in choice colors
  • Cutting machine (I love my Cricut!)
  • Glue gun
  • Ribbon (With my second tree, I found tulle worked better, so opt for that if you can)
  • Patience (these trees are not at all hard to make, but the pine needles do take a little time to cut out on your machine. Wrap some Christmas presents in between loading paper!)
Supplies you need to make paper Christmas trees: paper leaves cut from green card stock, green ribbon, and a foam tree base.

How to Make Colorful Paper Christmas Tree Crafts

Step 1: Cut the Pine Needles (Use Your Cutting Machine!)

Gather your supplies and get all your pine needles cut out. Depending on the size of your foam tree base, everyone will have a different count. For my largest one I used roughly 30-35 pieces.

A woman's hand wraps green ribbon around a white foam cone base.

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A white foam cone-shaped Christmas tree base wrapped with a light green ribbon.

Step 2: Wrap Tree Base with Ribbon

Wrap your foam tree base with ribbon or tulle close in color to your paper choice. I found that tulle wraps a little more neatly though I managed to make the ribbon work fine too!

A woman's hand starts placing the green paper Christmas tree branches on the ribbon-wrapped foam base.

Step 3: Attach the Paper Pine Needles

Starting at the bottom, glue the wider pine needle cuts around in a circle following the foam base. Slightly overlap so that you are achieving good coverage.

Many small green paper pine leaf branches are attached to the base of a green ribbon-wrapped foam cone, creating the bottom of the paper Christmas tree.

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A woman's hand holds the in-progress paper Christmas tree, half-way filled with green paper pine leaf branches.

Keep working your way up the entire tree base, gluing each piece on. Like I said before, the tedious part is really waiting for the paper to be cut out but otherwise, it goes pretty quickly. This set of 3 trees took me 2 days to make.

A woman's hand holds a few small green paper pine needle branches between her fingers.

Step 4: Finish the Paper Christmas Tree with a Pointed Top

When you reach the top, you will want to give the illusion that the tree comes to somewhat of a point, like a real tree. Glue 2 pine needle pieces back to back to form a tepee. Then attach it to the tree by the open end of the pine needle tepee.

Three small paper Christmas trees of different sizes, sitting on a metal tray. The tallest paper tree is made with green paper, the middle tree is blue, and the smallest tree is a light teal color.

Make just a few of these or a whole forest! These Christmas tree templates are perfect to make holiday decor statement pieces that are guaranteed to be one of a kind. How would you use them?! Tell me below in the comments!

Download Your Christmas Tree Template

Click here to access my resource library with this template!
Don’t forget to pin this for later! You know you will want it!

Three small paper Christmas trees made with green and blue paper.

Small Paper Christmas Trees

Prep Time: 5 hours
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 5 hours 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy to Intermediate

These adorable small and colorful paper Christmas trees are perfect for holiday decor! Use your favorite colors to make fun, festive paper Christmas trees for around your home.

Materials

Instructions

Step 1: Cut the Pine Needles

Gather your supplies and start cutting the pine needle branches. This will take lots of time, so be patient! For my largest tree, I used roughly 30-35 pieces.

Step 2: Wrap Tree Base with Ribbon

Wrap your foam tree base with ribbon or tulle close in color to your paper choice.

Step 3: Attach the Paper Pine Needles

Starting at the bottom, glue the wider pine needles around in a circle following the foam base. Slightly overlap so that you are achieving good coverage. Keep working your way up the entire tree base, gluing each piece on.

Step 4: Finish the Paper Christmas Tree with a Pointed Top

Glue 2 pine needle pieces back to back to form a tepee. Then attach it to the very top of the tree by the open end of the pine needle tepee.

Did you make this project?

Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Instagram

A collage of images shows all the steps to making small paper Christmas trees. The top images shows all three Christmas trees - one light blue, one green, and one dark blue, sitting side by side.

Love this craft? How about upgrading to a stress free holiday season with my new 20 page Happier Holiday Planner! 

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4 Comments

  1. These are gorgeous! I have a Cricut on my Christmas wishlist list. I can’t wait to start making things like this!

    1. Thank you! I am glad you like them!

  2. Wow, I can’t even tell you how excited and grateful I am to find this cut file! And thank you so much for offering it for free! I’m a happy new subscriber! So, I recently made a 3-D red truck on my Cricut for my Christmas décor this year and was dying to find just the right tree for the back of my truck. After an exhaustive search in stores for a realistic-looking one (that was NOT a bottle brush tree), I decided I’d just make a paper tree, but wanted something that looked like a real tree. I searched and searched on Pinterest and while I saw a few cute 3-D ones, none were very real-looking. I got to the point of thinking I’d just cut a bunch of individual pine boughs of varying sizes and design my own tree, but then I saw yours and knew it was just perfect! While I absolutely love yours in those gorgeous bright colors, I’m making mine in varying shades of green. Thanks again and I can’t wait to see how my beautiful 3-D tree looks in my red truck!

    1. Hi Deb! So happy to hear this craft is bringing you so much joy! Merry Christmas!