Vintage Map Paper Christmas Trees

An easy way to reuse decorative paper, wrapping paper, old books, or even old maps is to create unique paper Christmas trees! This easy DIY Christmas craft can be made by kids and adults alike. Use pretty or unique paper and add some glitter to give it that extra shine for the holidays.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…in November!  I picked up a stack of old maps at an estate sale over a year ago, without an idea of what I was going to do with them.  I loved that the maps were of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

I’ve seen Christmas trees with old books and always loved the look, so I figured I would give it a try with the maps instead. I happened to find a map with muted greens and reds of a town right near my house and thought this would be the perfect paper for my paper Christmas trees.

I folded the pieces in half, layered a few pages on top of on another, and cut out triangles.  Then, I unfolded them and sewed a wide stitch down the middle of the tree.

You could easily stop at this point, fan the pages out, and call it perfect, but I decided to add a honeycomb effect to the trees.  To do this, you glue two pages together, move down a bit, glue alternating pages together, move down a bit, and then glue the first two pages together again.  If you’re using craft glue like me, you probably want to find some clothespins to hold the pages in place.  Otherwise, you’ll be stuck waiting for glue to dry.

Using hot glue would eliminate the need for clothespins and would definitely speed up the process and also make it a little easier.

I added glitter to the edges of one tree, but kept the other one as is.  I actually can’t decide which one I prefer. You could also add fake snow to the edges which I think would give a really neat effect as well!

These paper Christmas trees couldn’t get any easier. I might try out this project with other types of paper next year because I love decorations that cost virtually nothing!