Making of the Wishing Tree

       Some days my creative side really comes out well! As I began thinking about how to make a wishing tree, I started talking to my future mother-in-law about how I could construct such a thing. She mentioned placing wishes in a hole rather than clipping/tying them onto the branches. So I went home and found a box from a vacuum cleaner that we got for Christmas. I cut out a hole and removed the back side (opposite of the hole). Next I affixed a small box beneath the hole on the inside of the box using duct tape. This was to catch our wishes!

       Next I took some brown paper that came from packing material inside the boxes of some things I had ordered from the wedding, and fashioned them around the hole. I hot-glued this down. I used the brown paper to cover the other three sides of the box. I again used hot glue and was sure to leave natural wrinkles to make it look like bark. Then I made a little branch coming out of the hole for a cute little owl I found at a garage sale to sit on. Once that looked the way that I wanted, I took my creation outside and spray painted it with the same glittery copper spray paint that I had used to color the leaves for the boutonnieres.

      As the tree lay drying, I took the back piece that I cut from the box in the beginning and drew a tree-top. I cut out the tree-top and painted it a pretty green shimmery acrylic paint that I had laying around the house. After the paint dried, I used a black sharpie to write “Leave your wishes for the Mr. & Mrs.” on this. I then hot-glued some glittery green leaves I had found on sale after Christmas onto this sign. I also made sure that this would stand up on its own using extra pieces of cardboard and, of course, LOTS of duct tape!

       For the final touch, I hot glued my little owl into place on his branch and placed the tree-top on the top of the trunk I had created. My grandmother-in-law-to-be found a cute ceramic squirrel figurine at an estate sale that I plan to use to hold pens and pieces of paper shaped like acorns for writing wishes upon.

Wishing tree before spray painting
the trunk or decorating the top.

 

Wishing tree after spray painting and decorating.