How To: Cardboard & Toilet Paper Roll Tree

Cardboard and Toilet Paper Tube Tree

This week I wanted to create a project that brought the outside, in (because it’s too cold to go outside right now!). I looked around my house for inspiration and I found a cardboard box and toilet paper rolls. I’ve done projects with toilet paper rolls before, like the Toilet Paper Roll Christmas Lights and the Christmas “Candle” Cover, but I wanted to make something more natural-looking. Drawing inspiration from a fall project I did on my personal blog, I created a Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree!

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

What You Will Need:

1. Cardboard box

2. Scissors or box cutter

3. Toilet paper rolls (I used two paper towel rolls)

4. Green paper

5. Pencil

6. Hot Glue/Hot Glue gun

7. School glue. If you can, use Eco Glue.

How To Do It:

1. Lay out your cardboard. My box was smaller so I had to take it apart to make one long piece.

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

2. Draw your tree. Please don’t judge my drawing abilities– I cannot draw at all. If you struggle like me, you can pull up a Google image of a tree and try your best to match it. I also ended up adding a piece to the top of the tree after my roommate lovingly made fun of mine, so there’s always a way to fix it!

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

3. Cut out your tree using scissors or a box cutter. If you use a box cutter, please be careful!

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

4. Cut your toilet paper rolls into 1/4 inch sections. Like I mentioned before, I used two paper towel rolls for this project.

5. Once cut, glue your toilet paper roll sections directly on your green paper. You can use hot glue, but I would recommend using school glue for this step– it will make it look nicer in the end.  If you have any questions regarding this step, please refer to the Toilet Paper Roll Christmas Lights post.

6. Once they are dry, cut around the toilet paper roll sections. Now you have your leaves for the tree!

7. Lay out the leaves on your tree so you can visualize how the final product will look. Once you get all of the leaves in place, hot glue them onto the cardboard tree. Some of the leaves I glued on top of the branches like this:

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

Some of the leaves, though, I glued to the sides of the branches like this:

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

Once everything is dry, your tree is ready to be hung up!

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

DIY Cardboard and Toilet Paper Roll Tree

The tree looks perfect in between the two windows of the living room, which showcase the beautiful trees outside. It’s a creative and inspiring piece for the wall, and it was created from recycled materials! You could even turn this project into a family tree by writing your family members’ names on each leaf (it would be easy to add leaves as the years go by too). What do you think?

9 thoughts on “How To: Cardboard & Toilet Paper Roll Tree”

  1. I did a similar project for my classroom. Every child traced their hands and wrote a way they can help or support their family/peers etc. Things like raising their hands and wiping the sink counter… The hands were our leaves on the “helping tree.” they loved doing it! And to tell the truth, so did I!!!

  2. Shannon,
    Aww that’s so cool! What a great idea! I love that they wrote a way to help their family/peers too– such an important thing to teach children! Thanks for sharing your awesome idea! 🙂

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  6. Lovely idea! I’m thinking of putting it up in my room and replace the trees with pictures instead. Something like a memory tree, I guess? Anyway, what did you use to stick the tree onto the wall?

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