tree topper |

With the completion of our basement this past winter, I found I had a whole new space to decorate this year. Our basement in our new family room, so it seemed appropriate that we put our Christmas tree down there. The only challenge was we have an artificial tree. On the first two levels of our home we have 10 foot ceiling (kind of unique for 50+ year old home). However in the basement, it’s only 8 foot, which is exactly the same size as our tree. I certainly wasn’t willing to opt for a new tree so I had to improvise for a Christmas tree topper this year. Hence the Book page Star burst project!

There’s been lots of starburst inspiration around the web, and lots of book page wreaths and other decor….so I thought I’d combine the two for a Christmas Tree topper.

To start I pulled one of the 50,000 old books from a box of books that I managed to “steal” for a $1 (yeah, that was for the entire box that I couldn’t carry to my car), and randomly tore out a bunch of pages. The pages already had an aged yellowing look to them with darker edges giving me the antiqued look I desired.

I cut one page of book paper into a 3 1/2″ star on my Silhouette (remember that toy that has distracted me for countless hours) and a 5″ star out of red cardstock. I modged podged the two together to get this.

I took some gold glitter puffy paint and outlined the border of the book page star

Cut out a 3″ piece of cardboard that will fit behind the star without peeking out the sides.

Set the star aside to dry. Cut out some book pages and cut into strips. The book pages were originally just over 5″ wide by almost 8″ long. I simply cut the page into 1/3 page strip and 2/3 strip. Then cut both in half.

I rolled each piece of book paper into a cone shape

and stapled it to the edge of the cardboard.

Just keep going till you’ve covered the outer edge with paper cones stapled to the cardboard. To add some depth and make it look more full I added a second smaller layer of paper cones to fill in (using the 1/3 page strips of paper cut in half).

If you notice I stick my fingers in the middle of the cones to help position them into place. I started out gluing the cones together, then realized it wasn’t necessary, the staples held the cones pretty well. On some of the smaller ones I reverted to gluing the cones before adhering them to the cardboard. Before the final steps of adding the star, I took more gold glitter puffy paint and smeared it randomly on the edges of the paper cones to add some sparkle and depth.

When the paper cones filled the cardboard to my heart’s content, I added the star. I poked a hole through both the cardboard and star for a Christmas light. I adhered the star with some 3-D stickies on all 5 points. It is not flush to the cardboard, rather reinforced through the paper cones and with the Christmas light.