I Made A Chritmas Tree

So today I had some scrap wood lying about. Of course it was full of nails, not smooth or really very good looking wood. But I thought why not try and make something with it?

So I did, here is my scrap wood Christmas Tree.

Getting the nails out of these boards nearly killed me!
I'm sure the nails had little nail babies in the boards. There was just so many nails in such a small amount of wood.
I'm actually surprised the wood even held together after removing the nails.

Now I had a pile of fresh de-nailed wood ready to make my tree.

I couldn't figure out how to connect the boards together at first. My first attempt I tried gluing the bits on to each other but that was rubbish, there just wasn't enough area for the glue.

Then I came upon some plyboard in the corner of the workshop. So I again glued the planks onto the board and it really made a great area to lay out and sort how I wanted the tree to look.

Glued together and weighted down for a few hours helped the glue to take hold. Next came cutting out the plyboard backing. This I didn't really think would be difficult. Oh it was a right nightmare.
I used an electric jigsaw which kept catching the planks and not cutting the plyboard straight.
So after a lot of bad language and frustration I managed to cut most of the backing board off.
A chisel and hand sander allowed me to make some smoother edges.

And this is the finished product. I am genuinely quite pleased with this as DIY/Woodwork is very new to me even though I managed to build a crooked playhouse. But it's all a big learning step and I am really enjoying it.

Now I cant decide whether to just varnish it or paint it first so for now it will stay in this form until I can make a decision on what to do.