getting into the Christmas spirit

thanks to @hindavi for the invitation to participate in this contest, and as i can be a little slow she even helped me get started. like migratory birds, we left the cold north a couple of weeks ago and here in our surroundings in India there is nothing that remotely resembles the Christmases of my early years. it is not easy to get into the spirit locally here but there's lots of content on the internet not the least of which is all the great music. so when i put on Angelina Jordan's new version of Chris Rea's classic from 1986 Driving Home For Christmas

to make this i used the following:

green and red glitter paper
white paint
a star sticker
8 beads
some cardboard from an old box
a stick used to roll your own incense
2 cm of a stiff drinking straw
and tools: a glue gun, a compass and scissors

i traced a 10 cm circle on the red glitter paper with the compass

and cut it out

i did the same with the cardboard but slightly smaller and glued them together

on the green glitter sheet i traced circles with diameters 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 cm then cut them out

i assembled the base and stem as hindavi helped me cut out the green circles with sunray like cuts.

i poked a hole with a skewer and glued the straw in it. then glued the incense stick inside the straw. when the base was finished i continued to cut out the sunrays in the green discs.

the next step was to paint the tips of the green discs white to represent a dusting of snow

to fit the discs on the stem it is crucial to poke a hole at the exact center. luckily this is already marked from when i traced the circles with the compass.

i put a lille glu on top of the straw and slid the 10 cm disc down to it. then quickly slid the first bead down and glued it both under and on top before quickly sliding the 9 cm disc down

continuing by adding the 8 cm disc gluing under and over the bead

and so on to each consecutively smaller disc

finishing with the 2 cm disc

i stuck the star to the back of leftover glitter paper and cut it to shape.

to finish i cut and glued a 3 cm strip of the green glitter paper around the stem/ incense stick to give the star some space. then trimmed the stick slightly lower than the height that the star would be. when i glued the star to that green strip and the remaining stem the tree was finished

and here it is. many thanks to @hindavi for her assistance and photography. it was much more fun and interesting with her help so i am naming her as a 50% beneficiary of this post.

Merry Christmas to all!