When Tom rebuilt his parents' side porch and installed the wheelchair lift in July, I scurried around his work area picking up little bitty pieces of wood in various sizes. Stuff that Tom wanted to sweep up and throw away. I stuck the pieces in a Ziploc bag and put it in a drawer when I got home. This week I pulled the bag out to make my ornament.
You know I'm no stranger to offbeat trees. Remember the book tree? And the wall tree?
I didn't sand any of the pieces, I just drilled a hole in the centre of each one. I wanted it to look rough and rustic - imperfect, like a real tree. I also used a hammer and chisel to resize a few pieces since some were nearly the same length and I needed them to be graduated sizes.
I broke out my craft paint and gave the "branches" two coats of green (leaf green with a little black mixed in) while the "trunk" got two coats of brown.
Once they had dried, I strung the pieces together with twine. To make it easier to thread the pieces, wrap a piece of scotch tape around the end of the twine, sort of like a shoelace. I tied a knot between each wooden piece, to give it a bit of lift and to show off individual branches.
Finally, I added a pearl bead for a tree topper and fashioned a loop so that it could be hung. Start to finish, it took less than an hour to put together.
It's exactly what I was going for. I like to imagine it's something you might find at Ikea (though they'd probably sand theirs a bit). Besides being an ornament, I think it'd make a sweet little decoration on a gift as well. I'm keeping this one though - I like it too much to give away.
If you'd like to see some other ornaments I've made, check them out here and here.
8 comments:
I love this! I'd love for you to add it to our linky party @ http://thecraftiestallie.blogspot.com/2013/11/friday-follow-along-linky-party-tgif.html
Thank you for the invite!
This turned out so cute! And I loved that you didn't need to sand it. :-) I'm featuring this tonight at my link party and pinning!
Thank you for posting your wooden tree ornament, I love it! I featured it on my top ten picks this week. Have a great Thanksgiving, Mary
Thanks for sharing at Creative Mondays, love this :)
Featuring and pinning this week at the blog hop,,,
Thanks!
Thanks, Alexis!
Thanks for featuring me, Mary!
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