Tree-Rex: A Dinosaur Christmas Tree

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

Come see the project that took entirely too long, but ended up in Josiah having his dream of a Treeasaurus Rex. Plus a simple DIY dinosaur ornament tutorial inside!

Well, well, well.

If it’s not another DIY project that I made way harder than it needed to be.

I have had this idea in my mind for a year and of course when it came down to it, while a simple DIY project, I did things that made my life harder so as I guide you through this tutorial, I’m going to do a whole “do as I say, not as I did”, per usual with our DIY projects around here.

DIY Dinosaur Christmas Ornaments

Supplies

• Different size dinosaurs (I got the larger ones at the Target dollar spot and then got the bag of small dinosaurs from Amazon)
• Gold spray paint
• Fishing line (or you could opt to use ornament hooks like I did)
• Tiny eye hooks

Steps

I think I ended up using around 30 of the dinosaurs, but you could use less or more, depending on how many different dinosaurs you have, how many other ornaments you have for your tree or how big your tree is to even start with.

In my mind before I did this project, this was going to be a simple tabletop tree, but we ended up finding this super cute 5.5 foot pencil tree at a warehouse for dirt cheap and fell in love.

Using a drill bit slightly smaller than your eyelet hook screws, drill a pilot hole into your tiny dino.

Don’t be like me and hold it close to your body and get your super comfy fuzzy sweater stuck in the drill.

Also super important when drilling the holes, make sure that you don’t drill too far down. I tried to keep my pilot hole shorter than the length of the eyelet hook screw because I wanted the screw to have something to “catch” once I started adding it in.

My initial plan was to add a bit of super glue and then screw the hook in but it turned out I didn’t even need it so just screw in your eyelet screws and call it a day.

You will want to add these first so that when you spray paint your color of choice your hooks will match.

There are several ways to do this next part, but it may take some creativity.

Here’s what I did if you are looking for help:

I wanted to spray them all at once and I didn’t want to have to wait for them to dry and do another coat so I decided to hang them up.

I used a ladder and strung them up with twine. They were bumping into each other, but it ended up being okay. I sprayed them from the top and then just walked around the ladder and got the spots that were missing.

I also got under them and made sure they were sprayed from the underbelly.

At this point I did not know I was using hooks and thought I would be using fishing wire. Had I known I would use the ornament hooks instead, I would have just hung them on the twine that way.

What I’m saying is this:

if you’re using ornament hooks, hang them on the twine using the ornament hooks so they’ll be sprayed the same color.

You could get super creative with your spray paint colors and make this a really fun, colorful festive project, but I did gold because I do what I want.

Let them dry fully before you touch them or you’ll end up looking like Goldfinger from Austin Powers.

Add your hooks (or your fishing line) and you’re all set!

The Dinosaur Christmas Tree (or Tree-Rex, if you will)

I could have easily added more here, but I was going for more minimal.

I could have also spray painted the bigger dinosaurs as well, but he’s a kid and he likes colorful things so I thought it might be easier to just leave them.

I wish I could have found more because admittedly I did have fun with these guys.

I made them look like they were climbing the tree and eating the limbs.

Or this big purple guy eating the small gold guy.

And of course the pièce de résistance is the “tree topper” of this dino eating the top of the tree.

A last minute decision I had was to take his already existing toys and add them instead of a regular tree skirt.

He has this dinosaur race track that he got as an early Christmas gift and he’s OBSESSED with it. So since he’s not into trains, I thought I could add this as a fun thing in place of it.

He already had the dinosaurs so I just added them under the tree, but he plays with them all the time so they haven’t looked like this since the second I showed it to him.

Another reason I didn’t add more ornaments is because all the ornaments he and Charlotte make every year go on their trees.

Parenting hack: If you love the sentimental ornaments, but don’t want them on your main tree, get them little trees for their room.

Since they have trees in their room, I leave space for all the ornaments they make while they’re little.

Plus I let them choose an ornament each year and this year Josiah wanted the pretzel.

But he is also OBSESSED with Toy Story. Buzz and Woody. All day every day.

So I was able to find these little Toy Story figurines for $10 at JC Penney and used the same technique to drill a little hole and add the hook on the tree!

When it’s all lit up you really can’t even see the DIY dinosaur ornaments (this was before “we” added the personalized ornaments).

But he’s happy and for me, that’s all I really care about.

If you’ve got a dinosaur loving kiddo (or if you love dinosaurs yourself) this is a super easy project to make your dino heart pitter patter.

Happy Holidays!