6 Fake Christmas Trees You Can Fold, 3D Print, or Wire Up at Home

There’s a lot of reasons you might not want a Christmas tree in your house. Maybe you don’t have the space. Maybe you hate trees. Maybe you don’t celebrate Christmas… But if you want the Christmas tree experience, minus the actual tree, here are a few good DIY alternatives that don’t involve buying something bulky and made out of plastic.

Cardboard Tree

If you find yourself ordering most of gifts online anyways, then you can easily scavenge enough cardboard from the packaging to make this Christmas tree. That’s like getting a free Christmas tree with all your orders. Personally, I’d still opt to have free shipping, but this isn’t a bad alternative.

PVC Pipe Tree

Real Christmas trees smell alright, but sometimes they can be the worst. They are so full of greenery that you can’t even see all of your ornaments all at once! So if you’ve spent a lot of time handcrafting or imbuing your ornaments with lots of holiday memories, it’d be nice to see them. This PVC pipe tree is a clever way of having a tree that doesn’t take up a lot of space, but also functions as a nice display for ornaments and small wrapped gifts.

3D Printed Xmas Advent Calendar

Is this a replacement for a Christmas Tree or a replacement for an advent calendar? Por qué no los dos? When we first featured this 3D Printed Christmas Tree shaped advent calendar it was still in progress, but Peter Leppik has since finished the project (no surprise, this first came on our radar three years ago) and people have been printing this tree from Thingiverse ever since.

Custom Circuit Board Tree

This project from Make: teaches you how to make a custom circuit board in the shape of a Christmas tree with green and red LEDs. You won’t be able to put any presents underneath it, but you also won’t have to detangle those darn string lights to decorate it either.

Pegboard Christmas Tree

You can make this pretty simple tree out of pegboard, using a notch as a joint to keep it standing. The peg holes make it simple to hang ornaments and other decorations, but you could always channel Julia Child and hang your pots and pans on it instead.

Crocheted

When you think “crocheted Christmas tree” you might be thinking about something 2-dimensional or filled with stuffing… but this crocheted Christmas tree has an internal structure of wooden dowels, making it more like a real fake Christmas tree. You can even hang ornaments and lights on it!