Mobile Christmas Tree

Ornamental Surprise.

Wow. It’s no lie that this idea is beautiful. If you have an area in your house with lots of natural light, you must give this one a go.

What you’ll need…

a 17″ steamer rack from a restaurant supply store
about 5 feet of lightweight jack chain
a small carabiner
100 basic ornament hooks
one roll, 500 feet, monofilament jewelry string (not the stretchy sort)
200 jewelry crimp beads or tubes
jewelry crimping tool
100 lanyard hooks
100 ornaments

Mobile Frame

Turn the rack upside down and the spots where the legs were secured neatly become four hanging points. Separate four lengths of chain, attached them to the points using lanyard hooks found in the jewellery supply section of a craft store.

Join the chains using another lanyard hook, and put that on a little carabiner which hung from the hook in the ceiling.

Suspending the Ornaments…

Use jewellery monofilament secured with crimp tubes to hold the ornaments. Create loops at both ends. You can make a bunch of different lengths and secure each line to points in the rack grid using lanyard hooks, and hang a basic wire ornament hook at the bottom ends.

The basic ornament hooks allow one to easily move ornaments around from one spot to another. Our tip to you: keep the lines as separate as possible while you’re working with them.

Placement & Lengths

Create rings on the rack, with the longer threads hanging on the outside rings to create the cone tree shape. Spaced the rings about 1.5 inches apart. This gives a center point and 6 rings to work with, with the last ring being the outer edge of the rack, like so:

The number of ornaments should go: 1, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27. Divide the four lengths of string between those, giving the longest length more ornaments to help the triangle effect. Cut this many at these lengths for these rings:

For the Center Point: 5.5″
For Ring 1: one at 7.25″, one at 9.0″, two at 10.75″, three at 12.5″
For Ring 2: two at 14.25″, two at 16.0″, three at 17.75″, four at 19.5″
For Ring 3: three at 21.25″, three at 23.0″, four at 24.75″, five at 26.5″
For Ring 4: four at 28.25″, four at 30.0″, five at 31.75″, six at 33.5″
For Ring 5: five at 35.25″, five at 37.0″, six at 38.75″, seven at 40.5″
For Ring 6: six at 42.25″, six at 44.0″, seven at 45.75″, eight at 47.5″

In order to make the measuring a cutting go as quickly as possible, tape a cloth measuring tape to a tabletop and mark each length with the number you need to cut with sticky notes. Keep these in groups at this point forward, it will make it far easier later. Loop and crimp the ends, then hang them in groups on a curtain rod weighted down by an ornament.

To figure out where the rings would fall on the rack, tie a cotton string to the centre point and mark it at 1.5 inch intervals. Then, swing the string around and put as many hooks as you need on each given ring.