Family Tree {tutorial}

This coming Friday my family will be celebrating my husband’s grandma’s 90th birthday. That’s amazing! Her actual birthday is on Sunday, Christmas Day (fun fact..it’s my birthday too!). When we found out that there would be a big party in her honor my husband came up with this amazing idea for a gift for her. After all this, this is the woman who always answers “oh still fat and sassy” after you ask her how she’s doing. She actually asked for no gifts, but we simply couldn’t resist! I have to give the credit to my husband because it was truly his idea. I just executed it. I think my creativity must be rubbing off on him.

This would make a great gift for grandparents for birthdays or anniversaries.

Supplies Needed:

• Plywood or other flat wood (we just happen to have plywood at our house)
• Wooden leaves (I found mine here..they have tons of options!)
• 3 shades of green paint
• Brown spray paint
• Red acrylic paint
• Sand paper
• Drill and jig saw
• Wire
• Gold paint pens…1 thin and 1 medium

Step 1: Ok well first you’ll need a full list of your grandparent’s descendants. Make sure it’s well organized so you know who belongs to who. Now, your grandparents’ children will be the branches so you won’t need leaves for them. In my case this means there are 5 branches. From the branches will hang their children (the grandchildren). Now I chose to include spouses with mine. So grandchildren’s spouses hang from the grandchildren, and great grandchildren hang from there, in order of age. Does that make sense?

For example, my in laws are Art and Mary Jo. Their names are on the branch. They have eight children. So they will have eight rows of leaves hanging from their branch. Our row will look like this:

Adrian
Brittany
Mackenzie
Adalynn (we chose to include our unborn baby since she’s part of our eternal family)

Step 2: Once you’ve got the family figured out, lay out the leaves on the plywood and draw a tree to fit. Trust me when I say you’ll want to use the leaves while you’re drawing the tree. You need to make sure you have enough room between the branches. Make sure to make marks where you will drill holes for the wire for the rows of leaves.

 

Step 3: Cut out the tree. I had my incredibly talented husband do this part. He actually used a thin blade that is meant for curves on this to make it easier on himself. He then drilled the holes I had made marks for. We are using a thin wire so the holes didn’t need to be very big.

Step 4: Spray paint the tree brown. I know I didn’t say sand it yet. Just trust me. Let dry.

Step 5: Ok now you’ll bust out the sand paper. I went over all the edges and sanded them. Not only did this smooth the edges, but it gave the tree a nice worn look. Obviously if you don’t like the worn look you can sand before painting, but I think the worn tree actually made the leaves and writing on the tree stand out more.

Step 6: Grab your red paint. Using a stencil or free hand, draw a heart in the middle of the tree where the branches all come out from. Make sure you do several coats to make the red really stand out.

Step 7: Write the grandparents names in the heart with the medium paint pen. I chose to put a “+” sign instead of “and” because I thought it would fit better with a tree (like their names are carved in it). Then write the children’s names on the branches with the same paint pen, including their spouses if they have them. Start on the left with the oldest and go around to the youngest.

Step 8: Now for the leaves. Sorry, but apparently I didn’t take any photos of these next couple steps. On each of the leaves (except the ones that will be the bottom of each row) drill a hole on the top and bottom. On the ones that will be the bottom (Adalynn in our family) the hole only needs to go in the top.

Step 9: Now for painting the leaves. The grandchildren will be the darkest green, spouses the medium, and all the great grandchildren the lightest green. Let the leaves dry.

Step 10: Grab the thin paint pen. Start writing names. Make sure you have correct spelling! I had 75 leaves to write on…phew! Make sure you have the right names on the right colors too!

Step 11: Cut small strips of wire. Insert the wire through the back of the holes to connect the leaves to the branches and the leaves to each other. Use needle nose pliers to twist the ends down.

Step 12: If you want, give the tree a shot of sealant. Attach a couple of picture hangers on the back. Then get ready to give the gift of a lifetime! I have to say I’m just bursting to give her this gift! I know she’ll love it.

I’m linking up here:

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