Crafting Thanksgiving: Making a Tree

For the past few Thanksgivings our lil family has done crafts as part of what to do on Thanksgiving.  It's time together, fun, laughter, joy.  Three ladies: 35, 36, and 65... no traditional children, just inner kids :-)

To make sure I get something down for our reference, and anyone who stumbles upon this blog, I am drafting this post while doing things.  We'll see how that works ;-)  I went totally brain dead on Halloween time and forgot to post the cupcakes we did for the folks at the doctor's office.

Here we go.  I will likely switch between past and present tense depending on when I wrote the passage.

MAKING OUR HOLIDAY TREE

Our youngest cat hurt herself on last year's tree, so we wanted something that didn't cost an arm & a leg and also wouldn't hurt her.  We'll see what happens with this idea.

WHAT I (THINK I) NEED

• Foam Boards
• Paint
• Paint brush, naturally
• paint palette  (I'm using an old unwanted DVD... Speed Racer)
• Clear laminate (like "contact paper")
• glue gun
• pencil
• single sided razor blade (or with it in it's box cutter)
• paper towels
• q-tips for paint mixing
• water for brush cleaning

some supplies I think I need

THE PROCESS
Mixed green and blue paints to make green of course.  Paint foam board surface. Remix paint as needed the hope is a more "natural" variation.  We'll see.

the DVD palette

I found that I had to retire the DVD for a disposable condiment cup due to the cat. This project is so interesting... yeah that... with a cat "helping."

easier with the cup -- naturally

As I am painting both sides I thought I would add why --- I didn't like the shade of green board we found at wally world and we weren't able to make it to Michaels... so... Dollar Tree it is.

dabbing paint on board #1

Hazards of painting by the laptop... green dots to be scratched off, or coaxed off with a dab of water.

Well, got done with the second side, and the once straight board is now bowed, guess our tree grew crooked, reaching for the sun.

Then I drew the tree shape on the boards and cut 'em out.  I want to use as much as the board as possible, so I don't think the shape is going to be too classic. I started cutting when I forgot to apply the contact paper.... oops, applied and continued cutting. on the second board I laminated before cutting (used board #1 as template for shape). After board #2 is cut... I cut it in half from top to bottom.

laminating

The halves of #2 will be hot glued to #1.  (the paper came apart from the foam and since I can't find my packing tape, I'm using my foam glue to glue the parts back) my foam glue sucks.  parts are still curling up.  So I'm heating up the glue gun -- I'll get the stubborn corners then glue the halves to the whole. First I put a strip of glue on the half then pressed it to the center of the whole.  Then "caulked" both sides to fill in the gaps.  Side 2 of this 3D tree is a little trickier, since you're working upright ;-)

"caulking" to secure

and then, after about 4-5 hours... huh?! geez!  I am done.  Now we can make our own paper ornaments and use removable glue dots or looped tape to stick to the laminated tree, ideally it will be able to be removed.

I think I did alright considering that I had only a vague idea in my noggin. :-)

FINISHED!

I still need to post our ornaments  - hopefully I will remember.