Junk mail Christmas tree!

Junk mail Christmas tree

Day 347: Junk mail Christmas tree with how-to

18 days left! Today’s artwork is this junk mail Christmas tree with a full how-to on Instructables. A few days ago, I realized:

1. I had a huge pile of junk mail taking up valuable real estate in my art studio, and
2. I wanted a Christmas tree.

I also don’t have a lot of spare cash for a tree, am morally conflicted with supporting an industry of tree-killing, and am constantly on the lookout for daily projects. Et voila! Junk mail Christmas tree was born.

Using a pile of junk mail and some pages from a copy of the Iliad, I made a half & half tree so I can go with the colorful side or frilly white book page side depending on my mood. 🙂

I’ve seen a lot of arguments over the years about craft versus art. I consider craft and art to be equal in expression, creativity and viewer enjoyment. Crap is still crap, whether it’s defined as art or craft, and you know it when you see it. In my opinion, all good artists should consider their work a craft anyway requiring skill and quality. So I hope with that explained, y’all don’t mind my use of this piece as today’s daily artwork.

Plus there’s something so satisfying about upcycling projects, where you can take something that would normally be useless and magically transform it into something pretty, useful or both. Believe it or not, writing a comprehensive how-to for something like this actually takes a lot longer than you’d expect. But people have posted photos of their completed efforts from other Instructables I’ve published before, and nothing makes my day like seeing concrete evidence that I’ve inspired someone. So here’s hoping you can use this info to make your own lovely little free tree! Happy holidays, darlings!

Advertisement