The Alternative Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree in all its splendour is a time-honoured tradition. Some trees are decorated and displayed in living rooms for several weeks or perhaps only a couple of days. Ultimately, however, it always ends up making quite a mess and taking up quite a bit of space. It’s especially difficult to set up a Christmas tree in a smaller home in the city. In addition, the short use of a real tree as a decoration is not exactly environmentally friendly. Here we’ll show you some eco-friendly and space-saving alternatives for a festive Christmas tree.

The first variant of our alternative Christmas trees looks just as festive as a real tree, but takes up a lot less space. It’s only 1 metre tall, 75 cm wide, and about 1 mm thick - the poster Christmas tree. This tree is especially practical for smaller homes and if you have young and active pets. It won’t fall over, doesn’t shed pine needles, and doesn’t take up any space.

All that you’ll need for this kind of tree is a picture of a Christmas tree and the ifolor photo poster. You can find many suitable photos of Christmas trees online. You could, for instance, use the website Pixabay to legally download photos without having to pay licencing fees. When looking for photos, make sure they’re in JPG format and have a high image quality, i.e. a high number of pixels. This will ensure your tree photo appears razor sharp even when printed out as a large poster. If the background of the tree in the photo is white, the effect will be that much better if placed on a white wall.

You can attach decorations and battery-powered LED fairy lights to your sturdy poster. Fairy lights with a thin copper wire cable are especially well suited to use here since they’re almost invisible to the eye. Now you’ll be able to display this creative Christmas tree any place you wish in your home and really bring alive the Christmas spirit.

For the second variant of our alternative Christmas trees we came up with something with a more personal note. This tree is also space-saving, clean, and eco-friendly like the poster Christmas tree we just presented. This “green” Christmas tree is abstract and is made of geometric shapes: 24 of them to be exact. The photo poster will be made into an all-in-one Christmas tree, Advent calendar, and photo bulletin board!

This tree gains its form from 24 green rectangles. These rectangles each have a size of 9 x 13 cm, which is perfect for 24 photos. All that you’ll need for this photo Advent tree is a photo poster in 100 x 75 cm format and 24 photos in 9 x 13 cm format. When selecting which photos to use, make sure you pick 10 photos in portrait format and 14 photos in landscape format. You can order prints of your digital photos here.

Create your individualised Christmas tree with your own photos. Whether you design your tree with photos to recap the year, vacation photos to combat the cold and dark winter, pictures from the last winter holiday in the snow, Christmas sayings and poems, or even a colourful mix of all of these - you can design your own Christmas tree however you like.

Hang up your poster in a place you can easily access so you can attach your photos. It’s easiest to affix your photos to the poster with small strips of photo tape. You can find these in many drugstores in the photo department. Keep your 24 photos in a safe place near the poster. Now, every morning you can take a photo out of your pile and attach it to the tree. On Christmas Eve you’ll have a complete Christmas tree full of photos featuring beautiful memories.

Your template for the photo Christmas tree: JPG-File

A tree made of wood and other natural materials has a homey feel and is very similar to the traditional Christmas tree. This is the reason we used mostly natural materials in the 3rd variant of our alternative Christmas trees.

Gather together some beautiful branches and pine cones while going on a walk through the woods. Once you return home, take out a pair of pruning shears and shorten the branches so that you’re left with each of them having a different length. Short the branches according to length from short to long and tie them together with sturdy cord. You can leave as much space between each branch as you wish. Leave a loop at the top of the smallest branch so you can later affix your tree to the wall.

Now you can decorate your Christmas tree made of branches to your heart’s desire with pine cones, fairy lights, as well as photos. You can either tie the decorations to the branches or affix them with a hot glue gun. If you want to prominently display your most favourite moments of the year on your tree, black-and-white photos in small formats, such as 9 x 13 cm, work best. You and your family will be showcased in a classy look on your homely DIY Christmas tree.

Get creative and design your own completely personalised Christmas tree!