Cardboard Stage Tree 

The 2017 VBS from LifeWay is Galactic Starveyors.  Looks like a few stage trees are needed. They are easily made from two inch Styrofoam, but if the budget is lacking;these may work instead. My guess is future VBS may need trees also, so if I can find a place to store them I will.

Here is a look at the tools and materials I used. The materials consist of cardboard and hot glue. I'll paint them latter. Cardboard is pretty abundant. When I go into Sam's Club* around 6:00 pm. they are more than happy to let me take large sheets of the stuff, and if I call Lowe's* in the morning and speak to the person in charge of the backroom they are nice enough to save me washer/dryer or refrigerator boxes. 

I'm working on two trees here, so there are photos of different trees at different steps of the construction.

I drew the tree trunk with a couple of bushes at the base. The bushes are needed to make the base as large as possible. The larger the base the more stable the tree will be. Also, I made sure on the second tree that one of the branches went straight up from the trunk. This will help the brace, that will be glued to the back later, to run straight up the entire tree. The first tree doesn't have this so the braces had to zigzag and are not as effective.

I have switched to cutting these big pieced with a jig saw. Wow, it was so much easier! than past cuts when I used a box knife. If you need identical pieces you can cut three or four sheets at a time.

When I use a box knife I cut one side then flip it over and cut along the other side where I can see where the blade cut most of the way through.

When I needed to make a sharp turn I just stopped the saw lifted it up and then plunged it back down through the cardboard in the direction I needed and started cutting again.

The only drawback is the frayed looking edges; which I trimmed with the sheet metal cutter and/or scissors. I'll get a blade with more teeth for future cuts and that should help.


Next I drew the foliage and cut them out. the foliage is a series of half circles around a large perimeter.  I made three little foliage pieces also.
(The orange is because I used that cardboard to paint giant carrots on in April 2017)

I needed a back brace so, I cut some four inch strips and scored them down the middle and folded them into an L shape. I held them against the back of the trunk and hot glued both sides.

I discovered that the best order of operations is glue the foliage to the trunk, then glue the back brace.

I Also needed a few more bushes to make the base for the tree,  Each tree needed two eight inch high strips; the longer the better.

I scored and bent the strips into rectangles, then cut cardboard-wide slots half way down from the top. I cut matching slots half way up from the bottom on the base of the tree. I slid the two together and this created a stand for the tree. 

I made most of the rectangle stick out the back of the tree, but I still needed enough out the front to keep the tree from falling forward.
Then I hot glued a small flat bottom bush to the front.

Now it was time to finish the top of the tree. 

I drew three small bits of foliage, and some one inch wide strips.  The length of the strips just needs to be enough to form into polygons.  







I put hot glue on the end of the polygons and stuck them to the foliage.








Finally, I put hot glue all along the edge of the two strips and pressed it to the foliage.



Ready for paint.

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