Create a Christmas Tree Village

I have always wanted to share crafty wisdom via Pinterest, so if you're reading this, I've succeeded!

My mother and I have been planning on tackling her Christmas Village for a few weeks now, and over Thanksgiving break, we decided to display her village in tree form! This will allow her to view it more often (as it will be in the kitchen instead of the less used living room) and is a new, fresh way to display one of her favorite Christmas decorations.

I'm sure there are many approached to this project. We decided to use a pre-made tree rather than construction a stand to look like a tree. Keeping that in mind...

Materials needed:

• Christmas tree (would be beneficial to get the snap-in kind where the branches can be individually removed) - $40 at Walmart.
• Rotating Christmas tree stand - $30 at Walmart
• 9 outlet extension cords (more depending on the amount of houses you will use, similar to this http://www.amazon.com/Outlet-Extension-Cord-Tree-Lighting/dp/B004CPI3VC) - $5 at Walmart in the Christmas section
• Green zip-ties - $4 at Walmart in the Christmas section
• Foam (you could probably get this at a craft store, but we found it cheap at Lowe's) - $10 at Lowe's Hardware 
• Thin plywood pieces, small screws and washers
• "Snow blanket" or other white felt-like blanket that are often used with villages
• Measuring tape, pen, masking tape, small sharp knife, wire cutter
• Your treasured Christmas village houses, people and accessories!

 

1. Prep Your Materials: Start to organize your pieces and decide how many levels you want to have in order to decide how many shelves to make for your tree. Our tree was big enough to make three shelves and then use one of our taller pieces for a tree topper. I try to stick by the uneven rule - that is, 3 shelves look better visually than 4, 5 more than 6, etc. Of course, that's up to you! Assemble your tree and place it in the rotating stand.
2. Form the Shelves: You'll be bending a lot of branches for this project! Flatten out each section that will hold the shelf in order to get a sense of how large to make the foam shelf. Once you stand back and observe, you should be able to see distinct levels. If it still looks too full, take out one or more rows of the snap-in branches. If you're ok with doing so, you can cut off the pieces of the branches to use for filler later.
3. Place Cords: Now would be a good time to zip-tie your extension cords to the center pole of the tree. Make sure to plan for how many pieces will be on each level, and leave enough plug-ins for that level. We made the mistake of only leaving 2 plugs available on the top row, then realized we were leaving out our tree topper! Using green cords and ties makes it easy to connect it right to the center pole without worrying about the look. You'll cover it all up anyway.
4. Measure: You could choose to conceal the foam, but we used it as if it was snow, so we left the edges rough and uncut. In order to keep the shape of a tree, I took the bottom, largest measurement of the bottom shelf (from the middle pole to the furthest length I'd want my village to sit) then reduced it by 3 inches each time. For instance, measuring from the pole to about 2 inches shy of the end of the branches was 15 inches. The second higher level was then 12 inches, and the top was 9 inches. 
5. Cut Foam: Mark a string to your measurement, tape to the end of the foam and create a half-circle by placing a pen in the mark and pulling around into a half circle. After doing this twice, you'll have the two pieces of your first shelf. After placing the two pieces together around the pole of the tree, you can guesstimate how large you need to make the half-circle holes that will allow for the pole space.
   
   
   
   
6. Reinforce Foam: This was an unanticipated step but it ended up being necessary! Dad had to utilize some thin plywood pieces so that the foam didn't snap under the weight of the village. He screwed longer pieces from one half circle to another while I held them in place on either side of the pole. It's important to use washers or the screws may rip right through the foam! 
   
7. Now comes the fun! Build your village: Now you get to start placing your village items! The fun lies in deciding where the pieces will fit. Be careful as you balance the pieces. It may take lots of finagling to get the foam to visually be even. Place the large, lit pieces first before any accessories.
8. Cover your tracks: It should be starting to come together at this stage! Before adding any of your fun accessories, you should cover cords and the center pole with your extra pieces that you took from the tree, or with a cheap garland (picked one up for $2 at Walmart but need it). Part of the appeal of this approach is trying to keep it looking tree-like, so bulking up the center pole will help with that. Notice how there are still a lot of holes in our design, and how the tree branches still need some "grooming".
   
9. Finishing details!: When no signs of your cords show, you can now add details! People, benches, roads, or chicken coops in our case. With a few exceptions, we didn't need any glue or tape to keep the small pieces down. This is also the time to mold the branches of the actual tree to your liking - we went for a rounded look but you could keep it wild, too. One of my favorite parts of this step was adding our trees (21 pack from Michael's) in the top layer of the tree. I just used the bendable branches to wrap around and conceal the white base, and it looked just like the top of a mountain! We felt like the strategic placement of these little trees around the pole really helped with the realistic feel.
   
10. Last step: Cover the base with your "snow". By the way, we ended up using a more heavy-duty rotating stand that my dad had from work (so yours wouldn't look like this) but you'd still get the same result. Plug in and enjoy!! (ignore the odd stitching of my panoramic photos)