Christmas Designs

Reel Christmas

Daniel Walmsley from Life Anglican Church in Quakers Hill, Sydney, Australia brings us this great Christmas design. (originally posted November 2015)

The idea was inspired by eight timber cable reels they found for sale for $35. They picked up the cable reels and started working on a design.

The angled uprights on the trees were 2.7meter dress pine. They wanted to achieve a bit of a point so they made 5 of the pine lengths longer than the others. They were held together by a single screw in each straight into a pine disc that they had cut out. The pieces ended somewhat flexible and each leg had to be positioned when the tree was put in place. The cone tree structure simply sat on top of the wooden cable reels.

The base of the reels were lit with an ourdoor floodlight, and they wrapped some boxes as presents to hide the light source.
The star light inside the trees was a cheap Ikea purchase and they plugged it into their dimmer rack to allow them to control the brightness of the stars.

The string baubles were inspired by this post, although soon after they saw some similar designs on this site. The string baubles were made for $35 each using flour and water and a gym ball to create the shape.

They only had one large gym ball so they could only make one bauble a day.

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Tightly Lined Portable Light Rigs

2 responses to “Reel Christmas”

  1. Kathryn says:

    Hello!
    This is so cool, and as our team builds up, we’ll be more able to do such a modern and rich design that reflects each season. I love your design for Christmas! Thank you for sharing your ideas and construction helps – we do it all on a small budget.

  2. Jay says:

    Can someone please share how the “pine disc” connects to the other pieces? Also, can someone post a link for the star? And, what are the measurements for the tall wood pieces?

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