DIY Placecard Tree
Posted on: December 27, 2008
Instead of arranging your place cards in the usual rows on a table, how about making some place card trees? This is a fun and decorative way to present your guests’ place cards, where you arrange branches in a container and tie each place card with ribbon to the branches. The effect is very pretty and you get to customize them the way you want. Just a small warning that this project will take up quite a bit of time especially if you have many guests – make sure you ask for help and don’t leave it until the last minute!
For this project, you will need: vases, branches, floral foam (optional, as needed), material to cover the foam (as needed – try moss or river rocks), thin ribbon (satin, chiffon or grosgrain would work best), printer-compatible cardstock paper (Michael’s Craft Store has a great selection – we like the Anna Griffin printed card stock), small hole punch (again, you should be able to find this at Michael’s – for fun shapes, you should check out the Martha Stewart line of cool paper punches).
To start, print out your guests’ names and table numbers onto the card stock and cut into individual place cards using a paper cutter or Exacto knife. Through this process, remember to measure the cards out to be uniform with one another. Punch a hole at the top of each card. Arrange branches in the vases using floral foam, then cover the foam with moss or river rocks. If you are using a glass vase, you could use coloured sand or small coloured stones to keep the branches in place. Tie each place card to the branches with the ribbon. In our example, below, two pieces of cardstock were used in place of punching a hole and tying the ribbon. The ribbon and beads were attached to the back of the place card by using glue or double-sided tape and then gluing a second plain piece of card stock on top of the ribbon and beads to secure them. One thing to remember when tying the cards to the branches is to keep them in as much of an alphabetical order as possible so it would be easier for your guests to locate their name. It would also help to indicate how the names are arranged alphabetically with a sign at the base of each tree, like in our example.
