Vintage Christmas Ornament Decor Tree

A few years back my Mom gave me a box of vintage Shiny Brite ornaments. I love vintage things and I love Christmas so perfect. My only problem was that one box of 12 small ornaments didn’t make much of an impact statement in any area of my home. Finally, this year, I was able to think of a way to display them creatively and it was a project that I was able to DIY very easily. It is definitely a project that you should try to do as well.

You really don’t need much wood at all to complete this project. I actually used all scrap wood cast offs from other projects to complete most of this one. The only thing that I had to buy was a 3/8″ dowel rod for .98 cents.

I used the following pieces and cuts for the project. The hardest part is probably assuring that when you predrill for your dowel rods that you get each side very close so that the dowel rods are as close to level as possible and are spaced nicely. I used 5″ between each drill hole and it nicely spaced the vintage Shiny Brite ornaments.

For part of the base, I actually glued together two right angled remnants to make a square solid piece of the rail car bottom that I had. I was getting close to my last few inches of this item. I hated to waste any portion of it because I love the rustic look to a rail car bottom board.

After it dried thoroughly I ended up cutting it into two rectangles (the top and second piece). The other piece was my last remaining remnant. On this particular tree, I used the top piece for the trunk and the bottom piece for the stand. This left me the 2nd piece for another wood Christmas Ornament Tree.

So what happened to that second and last remaining piece of that remnant rail car bottom… Well, I combined it with the remaining boards from the removed remnants of the antique cabinet (Normally, I don’t believe in altering antique pieces but this piece needed to be altered in order to be stabilized so it could have life left). I try to use all my remnants to do good things and not end up in a landfill. These boards were part of the depth of the sides that I removed. I didn’t have a board that was 22″ in length so my next tree was going to have to be made smaller. Here is what the remnants became.

The remaining piece of railcar bottom to the right and the bottom trim remnant from the side of the antique cabinet that was removed became an awesome tree base. Probably my favorite of all the 4 ornament tree bases I have made.

As you can see, I was dealing with shorter boards for this one. It actually is my favorite tree. It doesn’t display as many ornaments but, I still think it is a pleasing way to display 9 ornaments.

And after this piece was created, my pile continues to diminish of leftover wood from the cabinet. The sides (depth) that was removed is down to 4 boards. Stay tuned… You’ll have to see what I make from these last 4 boards!