DIY Rustic Christmas Tree Collar

Deck the halls with boughs of holly…and stockings, and ribbon, and glitter, and ornaments.

Tis’ finally the Christmas season. Over the past few weeks I’ve slowly collected odds and ends for decorating the house. And because I find it infinitely more fun to DIY my decorations, a lot of those odds and ends came from craft and hardware stores.

First up on my project list was a base for our Christmas tree.

While perusing the mecca of DIY projects and home décor (Pinterest), I came across the trend of using tree collars in place of the traditional tree skirt. Since a tree skirt in my house inevitably turns into a dog bed and leaves me brushing off fur and straightening it 20 times a day, a tree collar seemed like an awesome idea.

I’ve seen cheap ones at places like Walmart for as little as $20, but my need to decorate my house like a scene from Little House on the Prairie caused me to fall in love with a wooden tree collar I saw on Etsy.

And, naturally, it was a lot more than $20.

What’s a girl to do?

Tackle another DIY project of course!

Gathering the supplies was easy. A quick trip to Lowe’s to purchase lumber and screws, a little online shopping courtesy of Amazon for decorative hardware and I was in business. Or at least, I thought I was…until I realized my cordless drill was being held captive with most of my other tools by giant spiders in the crawlspace under the house. Sigh. So, after another hardware store trip to acquire a (very) cheap replacement, I was finally good to go. (DIY tip: if you don’t own a power saw and don’t want to spend hours turning your arms into jello sawing boards, stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s typically have a cutting station and will cut the boards to size for free.)

The first step to this project was easy, but a little time-consuming. I started by sanding down the boards, a useful trick I picked up online to bring out some of the natural wood grain. Then I stained them all with a dark wood stain, let them dry for a day, and sanded them again to make the wood grain pop against the dark stain.

And, voilà, I had a box. Or at least, the sides of a box. Obviously, since the purpose of the box was intended to hide the base of the tree, I didn’t bother constructing a top or bottom.

To finish the box, I used decorative nails to attach these simple trunk accents to the top and bottom of each corner.

Since most of my DIY projects typically consist of using hot glue guns and glitter and less carpentry, I was pretty proud of how this one turned out. There’re a few imperfections (like the board I almost split trying to screw into place or the corners where the boards don’t exactly fit flush), but I’m still calling it a win. The final result is perfectly rustic and sturdy enough to last a few years.

Best of all, the entire project cost me less than $40, including the price of replacing my cordless drill.

The only downside is now I’m wondering what other carpentry projects I can undertake.

I hope my husband likes the smell of sawdust.