diy easter tree

Hey hey hey - I made a stick tree! This is noteworthy because some of you might recall that I used to make little stick trees all the time when I was a baby blogger. I made them to celebrate the holidays in a way that was easy and not too hard to accomplish - you just hang things on sticks. Little paper lanterns, Halloween ghosts, fall leaves. You'll notice I'm not linking to those old posts because the photos are so horrendous, I just can't.

But then I got bored with my stick trees. I felt like I had nothing more to SAY with my stick trees.

But then I came across a Tasha Tudor illustration in this cookbook, and there was a picture of an Easter tree, and I fondly remembered my Swedish Easter tree (I am linking to this one, but prepare for some retina searing - I was a little over the top with my color back then. white balance? what white balance??) - anyway, long story short, I felt the need to make a little Easter tree.

Actually, I wanted to BUY one, but I couldn't find any I liked. I saw one that was a maybe, but I thought, you know, I'm just going to make one. So I collected some sticks from outside that were left there by the stick fairies and off I went.

I realized that plain brown sticks was not the look I was going for. So I decided I would wrap my sticks in spring colored yarn. Except I didn't have yarn - I had extra thick thread. So I used that.

I very quickly realized that this was a mistake and was taking a VERY LONG TIME, and that if I continued wrapping thread on sticks, I might still be wrapping as you're reading this. So I had to abandon the stick wrapping. If I had had actual yarn, that would have been a different story. If you look at the pictures, you can see that I wrapped a couple in the thread, but then I switched over to one of the greatest inventions ever to hit mankind....WASHI TAPE.

More specifically - FABRIC washi tape! It's washi tape but it looks and feels like fabric! I got it at my local craft store. You peel off the backing and you have fabric-y looking tape! So I wrapped my sticks in that and I had this really pretty floral that reminded me of Liberty fabric, and I totally delighted with myself. See below, in the glass jar, you can see my pretty sticks.

Then I just hung my egg collection on the sticks. I got most of them from Cost Plus World Market, which is the greatest store ever and I do most of my holiday shopping there. I really love the little mini eggs with the daisies on them. I have some other wooden Easter ornaments, but I've had them awhile and have no idea where they came from.

I'm pretty happy with the result! But I wanted the tree to be standing more upright and tall. My sticks, even wrapped in tape and reinforced with the thread stuff, they were still fairly flimsy, and began to bend sideways with the weight of the eggs. It's ok though. Sometimes you just have to bend sideways. 

So...yeah! Behold probably my one and only craft of the year. Sometimes I make two things. Or zero things. But every once in awhile I like taping stuff. Cutting and taping are the extent of my craft skills. OH - I did hot glue the ends of the thread and parts of the tape to make it more durable so stuff wouldn't start unraveling. I have a mini hot glue gun and it's FANTASTIC. I could seriously hot glue ALL DAY LONG.