Wooden Advent tree {Ikea hack}

Earlier in the summer I attended a tablescaping event as part of the Ikea Autumn/Winter press show. I saw some great Christmas products and knew I would be going to buy some in store. We went to Ikea in October and I was so happy to see they had set up their Christmas displays. I bought quite a few new decorations, a gingerbread house and a lovely wooden tree.

The tree was quite a simple design with 28 branches, each with a small hole at the end to hang a decoration. I thought this would make a great wooden Advent tree so did a bit of a hack to make it into one.

Supplies needed:

Ikea wooden tree decoration (Vinter 2016 decoration)

Annie Sloan red and green chalk paint

I dis-assembled the wooden tree and removed 4 of the branches so I would have 24 branches, one for each day of Advent.

I couldn’t cut the metal pole running through the tree so instead I cut down the spare branches into small spacers, and then placed 1 below each set of branches. Then I painted the branches in alternate red and green.

I gave each branch two coats of paint to make sure I had painted the top, bottom and sides.

I painted the base, star and trunk of the tree with white acrylic paint and left everything to dry.

Then I assembled the tree. It makes a perfect wooden Advent tree and you could hang anything from the branches – small envelopes containing a different Christmas activity to do each day, a small wrapped gift or vintage number.

I decided to make my own numbered tags, one for each branch, so my children could hang one each day. I used air drying clay and some small number stamps I’ve had for ages.