DIY Glitter Cone Trees

You don’t have to spend a fortune at the store for your cone trees! These colorful glitter cone trees are easy to make, cost a lot less and add a fun festive vibe to your Christmas décor.

Our Christmas is literally full of color this year and I am loving every bit of it! When I decided to use a colorful scheme to my decorating this year, I thought it would look amazing to have a lot of coordinating cone trees in some bookshelves. Pricing them out at the stores had me rethinking that strategy though. However, I figured I could make some DIY glitter cone trees for a lot less and I was right! 🙂

I have made some Christmas cone trees in the past, but I decided to make these a little different. I was able to get lots of trees out of one piece of poster board using this strategy. It was pretty easy to make them, although a little frustrating actually shaping the cones at first. Thankfully I got better as I went along. 😉

Instead of glittering all the trees, I left some just painted. I really liked the variety of finishes. They coordinate well with the different finishes of ornaments, i.e. matte, shiny, glittery, on our Christmas tree. You will get to see that and some other Christmas DIY’s soon!

Supplies to make glitter cone trees

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

• Poster board – you can get single pieces at Walmart, I made about 5-7 trees out of one piece of poster board depending on the size of the trees
• Tape
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Pencil
• Piece of string
• Scissors
• Yardstick/Tape measure
• Acrylic Paint – I found my paint at Walmart, the colors I used are:
  • Apple Barrel: Lime Tree, Cameo Pink, Caribbean, Aquamarine (toned down using 1/2 white mixture), Bright Red
  • FolkArt: Magenta, Metallic Gold, Metallic Silver
• Glitter packs of various colors and textures similar to this and this – I found mine at Hobby Lobby and Walmart
• Sequins
• Mod Podge
• Foam Brushes

In addition to the glitter above, I also found this spangle glitter at Hobby Lobby. I used this on the lime green and silver trees. It is hard to capture how pretty and iridescent that glitter is in pictures. They are really beautiful!

I made my trees in varying heights from 7-13 inches. The size was determined by the height of the bookshelves they were going into. You could make your trees bigger or smaller depending on your needs.

How to make the cone trees

The first step is to draw some cone shapes onto the poster board. I drew a cone in each corner then figured out what would fit in the leftover center space. Don’t worry, you don’t need any artistic skills for this! I have an easy way to do it. Take a pencil and tie a string/jute to it that is about 18-20 inches long.

Next take your yard stick (or tape measure if you don’t have a yard stick) and measure out 45 degrees from one of your corners to the desired height of your tree. This tree I was making in the picture was 13 inches tall, so I made a mark at 13″. From your mark, hold the pencil straight up and down and pull the string taut into the corner.

While holding the string taut at the corner, draw an arc all the way to each side of the poster board.

At the most, I was able to fit a 13″ and 9″ cone or two 11″ cones on the short side of the poster board. If you wanted a bigger cone than 13″, you would only be able to use one of the corners on the short side. Following the lines you drew, cut out the cones. After you have cones cut out, see what fits into the center portion and just trace them and cut out.

I made my cones in 2″ height differences so they were 7,9,11 and 13 inches.

Next came the hardest part of the whole project, shaping the cones. Actually it was just more frustrating than hard as it took a little practice to get the hang of it. I wish I had a lot of advice to give you for this part, but honestly I feel like you just need to try it and practice. I started by bending up the two sides and the cone and gently rolling it back and forth to make it more pliable. 

Then join the two sides of the cone together with them slightly overlapping and work it until it resembles a cone. Easier said than done, trust me! The trickiest part is to try to not bend the heck out of the tip! Ha! See the picture below for an example of what a bad one looks like. 🙂 

To secure the cone, I found the best way was to put a small piece of tape around the tip and hot glue the overlapping edges of the cone. At first, I tried just taping the cones, but that did not hold them well enough. Now just make a forest of trees.

If you are putting glitter on them, don’t worry too much about the tips as you won’t be able to tell anyway. Save the better looking ones to be the just painted cones. 😉

Painting the cones

After you have all your trees made, you can start painting them. The majority of the paints I used were matte finish and I liked that much better. The gloss finish left brushstrokes which does not look as nice and the matte just paints on much easier. I painted the cones with a foam brush, one or two coats depending on the color. If I was covering them with glitter, I only did one coat.

How to add glitter to the cones

Prepare to have glitter all over yourself and your house for a while. Ha! Actually it was not too bad, I used a big metal bowl to catch the extra glitter and that made for easier cleanup between the colors. I found what worked best was to work in small sections.

Paint on about a 3 inch section of Mod Podge. Keep a moderate amount on there, if you thin it out too much, the Mod Podge will dry out before you can cover the whole area with glitter. I started with the largest glitter item first. So in most cases, it was the sequins if I had them in a matching color.

Just a side note, I tried some light pink sequins on the hot pink tree and hated it. It looked like polka dots. Now if that is what you are going for, that works great, but it was not what I was aiming for. So I had to pick off the individual sequins. Learn from my mistake. LOL!

Lightly sprinkle on the sequins followed by the coarse glitter and then finally the fine glitter. I found it easier to pour the sequins from a plastic cup instead of the tiny bags they came in. Depending on the size of the tree, I used 1-2 bags of the sequins. Here is a sped up GIF of the process.

After you get a section done, just repeat the process right next to the area you just completed. Repeat this until the whole cone is covered.

Shake off any excess glitter into the bowl. I thought about spraying the trees with a sealant but have not done that up to this point. That remains to be decided. They do shed a little glitter on the shelves if I move them around but not much so I don’t think I will need to seal them. Here is the finished product. What do you think? Just as good as store bought, right? 🙂

Although maybe I should have made my cuts at the bottom a little more even. LOL No worries, you don’t notice that that in real life. 

I love the way they look and how sparkly they are! They coordinate fantastically with the rest of my Christmas décor as well. I am excited to show that to you soon too!

Until then, have a wonderful day and happy decorating!