Trying to make the house festive for the holidays and don't want to clean up messy pine needles? Make a beaded tree!

These instructions are from our last year's Christmas cards.

Step 1: Locating the "Kit"

For our Christmas cards, we made little bead "kits" consisting of approximately 200 teal beads, 20 white or clear beads, wire shaped in a spiral coil and a note with a web link to the instructions.

You could use any beads you would like and a compatible wire.

Look through the rest of the steps and experiment.

Step 2: Main Wire

Find a wire that will fit through your beads.

Cut enough length to fit many bead groups (in this example, it was took about 17 inches of wire to string 188 beads, where each bead was about 1/16 inch long).

Wrap the wire around a conical shape to create spiral (in this example, we used a piece of cardboard wrapped and taped into a cone shape).

In our card, we were asking folks to locate the wire used as the base for the tree.

Step 3: Start Beading

Set your pattern. Then Repeat.

In this example, the pattern is 1 clear or white bead and 10 teal beads, repeated 17 times.

Step 4: Stop Beading

Stop beading, leaving enough wire to tie off the end.

In this example, we asked folks to stop beading with 1 inch left.

Step 5: Loop and Tie

Make a final loop and attach the wire to itself to create a base for the tree.

In this example, we attached the wire to itself at the 6th group of beads.

Step 6: Trim and Shape

Trim the extra wire,

Move the beaded wire into the final desired shape.

In this example, we used the cardboard cone to help make the spiral consistent and give the final look.