Easter Tree

I loved reading the comments to the post a couple of days ago with the picture of the giant stack of felt. A couple of people said they would make ornaments, and that is exactly what I was making. I still plan on making several more, but I figured if I was going to make a teasing post like that then I darn well better reveal what I was up to sooner rather than later.

I'd like to do a few more of the sequined eggs, but I need to get some clear seed beads first. All I've got on hand are the purple ones (hence me doing a purple egg first) and they won't work for everything. I've also got a couple more ideas for ric-rac striped ones as well.

Years and years ago, my mom made a cool Easter tree with a white painted branch (I think a piece of sagebrush that she picked up off of the desert) mounted to a board for a base. Since I am "grown up" now and live away from home, I decided that I needed to make my own easter tree. I had been eyeballing trees and trying to figure out what sort of branch would work for this project when Martijn suggested that we call his parents and ask if we could have some of the trimmings from their curly willow. It's a good thing we called when we did because they were cutting down the tree that very day. If we'd waited to call, I would've been one sad kid.

The next quandary was figuring out some sort of base. On my mom's tree, the branch was one piece so it could easily be attached to the base. Since I had several branches this wasn't going to work. I headed to the thrift store and spent a good half hour or so going through their vases and pots trying to find something that would work. I came up empty, so I started looking at the other shelves of glassware (ok, I admit, I was looking for Pyrex) and saw a cute juice carafe. It looked like it would be just about right for the project so I went ahead and bought it.

I'm still toying with the idea of painting the branches white, but my last project that involved spraypaint made me want to tear out my hair. I don't have much hair to tear out so I'm leaving it like this until I decide what to do. I put gravel in the bottom to weigh it down and a little bit of fake "moss" in the neck of the carafe to hide the bottom of the sticks a bit. I think it turned out pretty cute.