"Shabby" Easter Tree

It’s a cold, rainy, foggy day here which has motivated me to do little else but craft and since I’m in the “Easter” groove, I continued on with that theme and made this little Easter tree.  I already had these little tin containers (which were originally a shiny, silver finish) so I spray painted one to use for my base. 

To decorate it I went back to Google and found these cute, vintage Easter postcards, printed them out, tore the edges and distressed them.  Using Mod Podge I attached them to the container front and back.

 

After they were dry, I used a small paintbrush to add glue to parts of the images and then sprinkled on my favorite ultra-fine glitter.  Once this was dry, I used a small, dry brush to remove any excess glitter.

 

To hold  the branch in the container, I used hot glue to attach a spray paint can lid into the bottom, put the branch in the little center hole and surrounded it with sticky tack to secure it.  I added some sheet moss to cover all of that.

 

I had a hard time deciding what to put ON the tree so looking around I decided to take some pages from an old book and make flowers to attached to the branches.

First I crumpled up the pages and then un-crumpled them.  Taking a light brown ink pad, I rubbed the pad over the wrinkled pages, distressing them.

 

Then I used a circle scallop punch to punch out the petals.  If you don’t have a circle punch or scallop punch, just cut out circles free hand – the more uneven, the more vintage it will look anyway!  Laying 4 petals on top of each other, I inserted a jewel-brad. 

Next I crumpled up the petals and then fanned them back out giving the flowers a 3-dimensional look.  These were attached to the branches of the tree with hot glue.

 

You really could use any type of container-- even an empty aluminum can would be cute!  So this is a really inexpensive (and in my case . . . free!) project to use as a table centerpiece for your Easter dinner!

And I found a 'temporary' use for the little vase whose handle I replaced with beads!  Happy Easter everyone!!