Wednesday, November 28, 2012

project lately: string art tree

hi friends!

sorry- been absent lately... thanksgiving came and went and so did a flurry of delicious food (15 pounds of potatoes to peel and 9 pounds of green beans to snap), sweet sister in town for a week, brothers and extended family EVERYWHERE and i have loved it! plus, working on some big things- big girl beds for the littles and christmas decorating and a nasty bug that won't leave our family alone!

anyway- here's a little project lately. wanted the chickies to have something to play with and leave my big tree alone so i whipped up this string art tree.  




 i feel silly making a tutorial for this so i'll just give some basics....

*  bought the board off the scrap cart at home depot.  uh- 51 cents?  i'll take it.  it is big- 2 feet by 3 feet maybe and is made of pressed wood.  really heavy.
*   painted board with white paint found in the paint cabinet. 
*  using a sheet of freezer paper, made a stencil of a tree and outlined it on my board. 
*  to husband's dismay, nailed my panelboard nails around the outline while duck dynasty played.
*  using brown and green yarn, started wrapping.  i did the little rectangle for the trunk first.  then i sectioned my tree into 4 triangles to sting the yarn.  that way if the girls unravel it, i won't have to redo the whole thing.  when i finished stringing the yarn in the sections, i did some lengths from top to bottom and across the whole thing.  
* to make the oranaments, i just used a circle punch to punch out circles.  smeared glitter glue on them to give a little sparkle.  while those dried, i cut paper clips in half and used some pliers to bend them into a candy cane shape. then i just made a little sandwich; foam, wire hook, hot glue and foam.  
* to make the garland, i used a roll of beaded trim. cut into several short lengths. i glued paper clip hooks on the end using hot glue.
* since the background is white, i used white velcro circles to attach a star onto the background.  you don't see the circle when the star isn't there.  and same for the little bag.  it holds all the decorations when they are off the tree and can just come off to make it easier for the girls to hold. 


they love decorating their own tree. it's pretty cute to just have leaning against a wall-  i didn't mount it or anything.  

after the fact:  i might brush watered down glue on it just to potentially prevent all the yarn from unraveling and make it stiffer.  older kids would be much more careful than my littles.  mia has trouble getting the ornaments off alone.  it would also be cute to let older kids decorate their own ornaments or use real shatterproof ones.   

lots of potential, dears.
take care!



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