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DIY Pipe Cleaner Trees - make these in under 15 minutes! Fun kids craft!

It’s time for another edition of Craft Lightning – the Holiday Edition – where a bunch of us crafty bloggers share quick crafts that take 15 minutes or less to make!

Craft Lightning - Holiday Edition - where each craft takes 15 minutes or less to make!

You can make tiny pipe cleaner trees in under 15 minutes, then embellish them to use as gift tags or tree ornaments!

silver tinsel pipe cleaner tree with vintage red sequin tree topper and baker's twine

Here’s how:

Start with pipe cleaners, of course! I used glittery tinsel-looking pipe cleaners I found at the craft store.

DIY Pipe Cleaner Trees - you can make these in under 15 minutes!

First, bend a small piece at the bottom, in a right angle as shown. (Right angles? Now I’m having geometry flashbacks!) This little piece will become the tree’s trunk.

Now rotate your pipe cleaner to the left, so that the tree trunk is pointing down. Begin bending and shaping the tree in a zig-zag pattern. The tree trunk should be centered below the bottom zig . . .

. . . and each subsequent zag (as you go up the tree) should be slightly smaller than the one below it.

When you get to the top, take the last tiny end piece and stick it straight up, mirroring the tree trunk at the bottom.

And that’s the basic way to create your pipe cleaner trees!

What happens if you don’t like the way your tree turned out? Just start over! That’s the beauty of pipe cleaners: you can bend and unbend them multiple times.

You can decorate your little trees with sequins, buttons, jingle bells, beads, or any other embellishments you can dream up.

I used a gold jingle bell, a silver-gray button, and a silver jingle bell as my tree toppers on the gold, green and blue trees . . .

. . . and I used vintage sequins on the silver and purple trees, plus a vintage green button on the final silver tree.

It’s super-easy to attach your tree toppers using mini or micro glue dots. (For the jingle bells and vintage button, I just had to slide the pipe cleaner tree top through the backs of each.)

To attach a hanger, I used baker’s twine to make a loop, then attached the knotted part to the same glue dot I used to attach the tree topper. Snip off the excess ends once attached.

For tree toppers like the jingle bells or any beads you might slide onto the tree top, just tie a piece of baker’s twine around the top of the tree – then slide the embellishment over the baker’s twine onto the tree. Easy!

These are fun to make – and you can make a lot of them in a short amount of time!

This is a fun project for kids too, especially when they see their creation hanging on the Christmas tree or attached to a present!

Click on the button below to see more quick holiday crafts! Each craft shared takes 15 minutes or less to make: a great idea when the holidays get busy busy busy!