Introduction: Recycled Christmas Tree

About: Once was a chef, now i'm a pizza tosser.... and that was a long time ago. Then I travelled the world, spent a lot of time in Antarctica, worked on pirate ships, and now I am in Melbourne...

As opposed to going into the woods and robbing a tree of its precious life, I decided to create a fully recycled Christmas Tree. The tree consist of about 250 green 20 ounce soda bottles, each one individually lit.

Step 1: Gathering of Ye Supplies

Well, to find and obtain the nearly 300 bottles needed for this project I set out on a mighty quest. All across the lands of Albuquerque, people where set in a Grinch like set of mind. No one was willing to help me obtain this much needed resource. The City of Albuquerque saw these bottles as a valuable resource and was unwilling to sell them to me. Luckily I was referred to a friendly chap, Gary, who owns Master Fibers.

I spent two mornings rummaging through Gary's sticky crates full of bottles waiting to be recycled in order to gather enough bottles which he sold at a vary reasonable price.

Other items I gathered where
-Lots of glue sticks
-an old rusted milk crate
-a couple paper grocery bags
-old Christmas lights
-a couple larger sour cream buckets
-a partridge in a pear tree

Step 2: Cleaning

This step is easy, I dumped the bottles in the tub, removed the labels, and gave them a bath.

Step 3: Assemblymajig

I began by drilling holes in a few bottles. Next I hot glued a light inside. Well, umm from there I glued the bottles together. As you may of guessed, I started with just one bottle at the top and made it wider the further down I went.

Step 4: Support This Bad Boy

At a certain point, somewhere around 3 feet down, I inserted the sour cream buckets to help use as the base. I connected it to another bucket and then zip tied and duct taped that bottle an old milk crate. Then I continued gluing glowing bottles to this mass.

Step 5: The Star

When I was at Master Fibers, my beautiful wench found these interesting plastic pieces. She took them home and hot glued them into these magnificent start. In case you wonder why the star is so cool, its because she's gosh darned genius.

Step 6: A Coating of Bark and Power It On

I covered the base of the tree with a torn up paper shopping bag that made it look a wee little bit like bark... Well, I guess all thats left is to power it on.


awww, its so lovely....

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