December's theme was a two-part creation consisting of guidelines set forth by my supervisor. She provided me with images, from pinterest, wanting both the polar express train (or my interpretation of it with the space provided) and a 3D snowy tree.
You can find information for creating your own snowy, winter tree here. For my tree, I used 5" x 5" squares of green construction paper. Using the longer length (10"x12") construction paper would produce 6 squares per sheet (with some minor excess trim cut off). The white "snow" was created in the same dimensions as the green portion of the tree, then cut along the diagonal in a wavy "S" fashion to create a snow effect on the green branches. Layering and matching the a corner of the green under the top corner of the white and stapling the two side corners together creates a conical branch with snow. Continue creating branches in this fashion to achieve the size and fullness you wish for your tree.
I created about 86 conical branches. In the blog post linked above, the creator of this tree design may have attached all the branches to a larger sheet of paper before attaching to the bulletin board as evidenced by comments at the end of the post. However, I only attached 3 cones to a triangular shaped paper which was then stapled to my bulletin board. I created my tree by individually stapling each cone to the board working in layers.
I was a little lost, initially, on creating the Polar Express train. I'll admit I haven't seen the movie but from searching online it's more of a bullet train than a square train. My train is a bit more reminiscent of the train in the 1964 classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". I created the train using basic shapes pieced together. Perfectly circular train wheels were made using a shape cutter (two different circle sizes) with grey and black construction paper. I added "children" from silhouette templates sourced online, traced onto black construction paper, cut out, and glued to the train to appear "sitting" in the train.
At the top of the board, surrounding the title, are little snowflakes. Instead of attempting to fold paper and cut out magical snowflakes, I opted for snowflake templates which I found here. If you have any creation questions leave a comment below!
As always, please share if you have re-created or updated any of my bulletin board creations. I want to see other's inspiration as well!
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