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Industrial Copper Christmas Tree

‘Tis the season for jolliness and hot chocolate and glitter and… copper.  Yeah, baby, COPPER. It’s popping up everywhere. I, for one, am not afraid to jump on board this metallic train, and I’m dancing my copper-loving fanny over from Ciburbanity. Wandering through the plumbing aisle at Home Depot (good times, folks) I noticed this coil of copper refrigerator tubing.  Industrial Christmas tree, anyone? I also grabbed a copper pipe and a pipe clamp.

copper tree materials

I started by making the base.  I used scrap wood, and some scrap trim I had on hand, but even a square medallion from the decorative trim aisle would work.  Copper’s light so the base doesn’t need to be super duper heavy or anything.  I gave it a coat of gray spray paint and then went over it with a dusting of white primer to ‘rough’ it all up a bit.  (I was hoping to use a dark stain, but the wood I used was all different types so I was worried the stain would look way too patchy.)

copper tree base

gray tree base

To secure the tree ‘trunk’ to the base, I used this elbow joint and a pipe clamp… if you can’t find these specific pieces, you could just get a 3/4″ drill bit and drill a hole in the base to stick the copper pipe into.

copper elbow joint

pipe clamp tree base

Before you attach the pipe ‘trunk’ you’ll need to drill a hole through the top of the copper pipe.  I clamped the pipe to the workbench and wrapped it with painter’s tape to give the drill bit a little something to grip.  Drilling through copper’s just like drilling through anything else… just go slow and steady.  You’ll also want to drill a hole through either end of the copper coil.

drill pipe

Time to assemble your tree! You’ll need some copper wire.  At our Home Depot it’s with all the picture framing stuff in the hardware aisle.  For the bottom, wrap your wire around one of the screws on the pipe clamp, then thread it through the coil and tie it off.  For the top, thread it through the pipe trunk and then through the coil and wind it around as neatly as you can.

copper wire tree top

The coil is pretty much tree shaped as is, but take a little time to tighten up the top and stretch out the bottom… honestly, this took 3 minutes… I had this sweet little star ornament in my stash and it works perfectly resting in the pipe at the top of the tree!

copper tree star

For the extra special finishing touch, I wrapped an LED copper wire around the coil and it’s the perfect little holiday icing on the Christmas tree cake! (Although my kids said it didn’t look like a tree because it wasn’t green… can’t please everyone.)

copper tree night

copper tree wide

I also decided that the gray base was a little too… flat, so I went over it with some Mod Podge and sprinkled some white glitter on top. Glitter makes everything better, right?

glitter tree base

tree base night

tree close

I LOVE the way this came out and plan to make more… a whole grove of industrial copper Christmas trees. These LED copper lights come in all sorts of colors, so that might be a nice way to add some variety too!

car ornament copper tree

copper tree title

I love using things from the hardware store to make home decor.  See how I made a floating acrylic frame here:

kids-room-art

This wood shim mirror here:

Sunburst-mirror

And these curtain rods here:

Industrial curtain rod

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12 Comments

  1. This is beautiful! I followed your link to the lights and see its a 20ft length. Is that how much you used on the tree? Thanks in advance.

  2. OMG! I love love love this copper tree! This is right up my alley with my love for Industrial things. I am definitely putting this on my list of things to make now! Thanks for the inspiration! I hope you stop on over at my blog too to check out my craft projects too! Can you imagine how cool it would be to make these copper trees larger, like for a front porch? WOW!

  3. Hoping this may be a diy xmas gift I came here to see how to do it. NONE of your pics are working. The whole page is little black error boxes where pics should be..except for ads which are just fine.

  4. I’m bummed too that the pics are ALL broken~ you guys always do such gorgeous trees and decor so I was hoping for more inspo here too. It just so happens I am standing in Home Depot at the moment so I’ll head over to the plumbing aisle and see if I can figure it out without pics.

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