Mini Tree
Here is how I made my Mini Tree's

Mini Tree's are about as popular as lights are for displays now a days.  There are a ton of different ways of making them.  You can change the wire you use, you can change the lighting you use...it is endless.  I good source for mini trees is from Chuck Smith on the Planet Christmas website.  

I basically used the same principals as Chuck did however I used tomato cages for my trees. The first year I did my trees they were just tomato cages wrapped with lights.  In order to stick with my rule of the display looking as good as it does during  the day as it does at night, I decided to wrap the trees with garland, then put the lights over that. 

Basically to start I took of all the lights, then wrapped the trees with the garland.  Then covered the trees with the lights.  The good part of having the garland is the light is "pushed" outward, instead of getting lost in the center the tree.  Because of this I was able to put 200 lights on the tree instead of the 300 or 400 that most people use.

Here is what the tree looked like before...

 

 

Here is the completed tree... 

 

And here is what they look like all lit up.... 

 


Mini Tree Update 9/2/08

For Labor Day weekend I took the 6 existing mini tree's and took off all the mini lights on them and replaced them with my C6 LED lights.  The lights are so bright, being that they are full wave, that I only need 2 string for each tree.  So instead of the 280 lights I was planning, I only need 140 lights.  That just means I can cut down the power draw from other sections of the display!!