Peanuts for Christmas

[Braveit1]

On the same theme as my Halloween display I created 9 Peanuts charactors for Christmas. I also was able to make 27 "mini trees" out of two 4x8 sheets of plywood. The trees are 16" tall with equal sides of 18". I used the 50ct LED lights from the Lowes 'sale' to dress them. Each tree had a notch cut on the top and bottom of opposite sides to fit them together and make for easy storage. A zip tie was placed at the top and bottom of one side to attach the lights. I wouldn't say it was easier than a tomato cage but still turned out nice.

[mcangeli]

Nice! I like the peanut cutouts.

[Livermore-Dad]

I like it and i'm not a huge throw a bunch of cutouts on ones lawn type of guy.

But it has enough elements that I like it.. neet idea on the trees, have any pics vids of them lit?

[dirknerkle]

Very, very nice. Good artwork on the cutouts, and a slick idea on the mini-trees! I sometimes wish I could do something like that but with 2' of snow on the ground now (and more on the way) nobody'd see those neat little trees.

It'd be cool if you could provide your artwork so others might "borrow" it and make their own cutouts.

Merry Christmas!

[SantasHelper]

I love A Charlie Brown Christmas!
Very nice display!
If you wanted to take it one step further, you could change your trees from being all green trees, to having a pink one, an orange one, a silver one... etc. Remember the "modern" tree lot in the TV special?
Anyway, how did you make the characters? Did you hand paint them?

[Greg in Canby]

Nice! I like the peanut cutouts.

Me too. While not my favorite peanut character, your Pigpen is my favorite cut-out.

Greg

[Braveit1]

The cutouts were done from pictures on the web. Some people have projectors and trace them. If you don't have a projector I find it better to print out the pictures on standard size paper, draw a grid on the paper by drawing vertical lines every 10 cm and horizonal lines every 10 cm. Next, draw the same lines on the plywood to the scale you need. Work on one square at a time. It's easier to break down a large image into smaller squares when you transpose. Your mind only needs to process one smaller image at a time.
For the mini trees I took a sheet of plywood and cut into thirds along the long edge to produce three lengths of 16"x8'. Next I marked a 'tick' every nine inches. Then I drawed a line from the first tick on the bottom left to the next tick on the top to create a diagnal line. Repeated this upside down for the next line. Did this a total of 10 times on each of the thirds. With 3 sheets of plywood I was able to make a total of 56 triangles or 27 trees. I cut a notch by using the table saw nine inches from the middle top on half the triangles and 9 inches from the bottom on the other ones.

[aERonAUtical96]

Was 50 ct lights enough to light the mini trees?

[Braveit1]

The Lowes 50ct mini led's is what I used. I stapled a zip tie to the top and one to the bottom of one side on the tree edge. Then I tied the top on, wrapped it three times and tied the bottom on.