I was hoping for a tutorial with a template for the button tree, but it was just a picture, still it was good enough. I wish I could give out a template for a button tree but I don't have one I just free handed it and up close it looks a little thick and sloppy.
I was trying to do this project as cheap as possible. I bought two big bags of pastel buttons and ribbon. I had some leftover bead board in the garage and thought it would be a nice background so I had my husband cut 2 16x16 pieces and I painted them white. For the M I folded a 12x12 piece of scrapbook paper and using a ruler made the best half of an M that I could, then I cut it out and unfolded it to reveal a really big M. I traced it onto the board, plugged in the glue gun, grabbed a handful of gluesticks and got to work. I placed most of the buttons before I started glueing. Once I liked the look, I started glueing. I put a second layer of buttons to cover up the gaps. To be honest I didn't love this project. I feel like my M was way to big and it just looks so much better in a nice shadowbox frame like the original pin I also noticed that she didn't use just buttons, there are beads and other items on her letter and I like the bolder colors. Oh well whats done is done, and I was done. I drilled holes at the top and looped a ribbon through to hang it and then I glued ribbon all around the edge.
For the tree I just free handed the tree and painted it black. If I were to do it again I wouldn't paint it, I would use a sharpie to color it. The paint got sloppy and so my branches got thicker and thicker, and it needed at least two coats to cover it good so I ended up going over most of it with a sharpie in the end to smooth it out and finish off the curlz on the branches. I feel like it would have looked much more clean if I bagged the paint. After the tree was done I just went crazy with button blossoms, maybe a little too crazy!I put a ton of buttons on it, but it never looked full and right and I am just now realizing that the original pin used bigger buttons. I may just make a few adjustments to my finished tree...
I just got a little wooden M and painted it to put under the tree, not as cute as a fancy painted M but much easier!
When I hung these up at first they were on separate walls and I wasn't crazy about either of them, but since I just moved Maggie into the smaller room and hung them on this shelf above her crib I find that I am much happier with the results of this project!
On a easy/hard scale of 1-10 I give this project 3.5, except for drawing the tree, that was a 6 but still most anyone on any craft level could handle this, it just doesnt turn out as beautiful as the original pins!
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