Christmas Tree DIY Place Cards

Create festive Christmas tree place cards for your holiday table using your Cricut cutting machine.

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Hello Crafty Friends! It’s the tenth day of my annual series “12 Days of Holiday Crafts” and today I’m sharing a tutorial for making your own Christmas tree place cards using your Cricut cutting machine. I made these last Christmas for our family dinner and they were a huge hit. They add color and dimension to any tablescape and are fun to make with just a few supplies.

The trees are so sweet and are such a great addition to the Christmas table. The names can easily be swapped out so no matter who is joining you at the dinner table they can feel extra special!

I first made this tree as part of an explosion box available in Cricut Design Space. After the sides of the box fell down, a 3D Christmas tree stood in the center and I thought it was the cutest thing! I decided to take just the Christmas tree and turn in into place card holders and I love how festive they turned out.

For this project you will only need cardstock, adhesive and a Cricut cutting machine. Since my file is a spin on something already available in Design Space, you can only use a Cricut to create this specific tree. However, if you have a different cutting machine, you may be able to find a similar 3D tree in their library and follow these steps to turn in into a place card.

Paper Holiday Place Card

Choosing the Paper

For this project, I recommend using solid core cardstock. Solid core means the paper is the same color on the outside as it is on the inside. White core, or printed cardstock, is paper that is colored on just the front and back and the inside is white. I find with the intricate cuts in the Christmas trees, that solid core cardstock gives a more polished look and there is no white visible that may distract from the design.

Supplies Needed:

Cricut Design Space File
Green cardstock – for the trees. You will need 1 piece of 12″ x 12″ cardstock for every 2 trees. I used a very stiff piece of Bazzill in Evergreen.
Red cardstock – for the tree skirt. You can fit 9 tree skirts on one piece of 12″ x 12″ cardstock. I’ve used a red buffalo check cardstock and a solid canvas textured red cardstock from Bazzill called Ruby Slipper
Gold Glitter Cardstock – the “stars” that hold the name cards
White cardstock – for the name cards.
Bearly Art Glue or another strong adhesive
Zig Glue Pen
Cricut Cutting Machine
Cricut standard mat
Cricut tools
Cricut Brayer

Prepare the File in Cricut Design Space

Open my Cricut Design Space file and cut out as many place cards as you need! The file is all prepared and ready to be cut except for the name card. You can use a Cricut font and pen to write out the name or skip having your machine write the name and either print the names from your computer or handwrite them.

The trees measure 3.75″ tall and my finished place cards measure 4.25″ with the white name cards added. You can change the size of each tree but make sure you select the entire project before adjusting the size so everything will still proportionally come together.

Nine tree skirts will fit on one sheet of 12″ x 12″ cardstock. Two 3D trees (12 individual trees) will fit on one sheet of 12″ x 12″ cardstock. Cricut started by only putting nine trees on each mat, but I was able to move three trees to fill in the extra spaces. You can do this by clicking on the three dots in the left corner of the shape, and selecting “move object”.

Cut the Pieces

Step One: Each tree is made from 6 tree pieces folded in half. Once these are all glued together, they create the 3-dimensional tree that can stand on the tree skirt.

Once the tree pieces have been cut, use a stylus to make sure all of the little holes are poked out.

Assembling the Tree Place Cards

Step Two: Fold each tree in half along the scored line and use a bone folder, or the Cricut scraper, to make sure the fold is nice and crisp.

Step Three: Adhere half of the trees together. Start by covering the back of your first tree with glue. I used my Zig glue pen for this since it made it easy to navigate around the cut outs in the tree.

Apply the back of the second tree to the right side of the first tree, and the back of the third tree to the left side of the first tree. Remember, you are never glueing two trees fully together, it always half of a tree to another half of a tree. Once all three trees have been glued together you will have one side of the finished 3D tree. Repeat for the other side.

Step Four: Glue the small rectangle of gold glitter paper, folded in half, to the tip of one side. This piece is the “star” of your tree and will also hold the name card.

Step Five: Glue the two sides of the tree together. The gold rectangle will be sandwiched between both sides.

Step Six: Glue the tree to the red tree skirt. I used Bearly Art Glue and coated the bottom of the tree. Place it at the center of the tree skirt and let it dry.

Step Seven: Print small names on white cardstock that can be slid into the top of the tree. My name cards measured about 7/8″ tall. I used the font “Cookie” by Ania Kruk. You could also handwrite the names if you want to avoid printing.

The Christmas tree place card are finished! I hope you enjoyed this festive Cricut craft! I hope you will continue to join me for the ninth year of my series “12 Days of Holiday Crafts“. I’ll be back tomorrow with day 11 and a new fun DIY holiday craft. In the meantime, you can also visit my Christmas craft page for over 100 DIY holiday craft ideas!