Framed Button Tree - Tutorial

This is a simple project that makes a festive piece of home decor for your home or as a gift for someone on you list! Let's get started with the tutorial:

Supplies:

* Unfinished wood frame (I got mine at Michael's for $1 - I never buy just one!)

* Red acrylic paint

* Scrapbook paper or fabric (for the mat behind the tree)

* a piece of cardboard the same size as the opening in your frame

* Aleen's Tacky Glue

* Green buttons and 1 brown button for the trunk

* Green Embossing Powder, Alphabet Stamps or "Believe" Stamp, Versa Mark Stamp Pad and heat gun (You could also just stamp the word but I wanted to emboss it to give it some extra pizazz).

1) Paint the frame

2) Adhere the fabric or scrapbook paper to the cardboard that will create your photo mat.

3) Now create your button tree. If you need to, in very light pencil, draw a triangle on your photo mat to use as your guide and fill in the triangle with buttons. Put a small dab of glue on each button and then stick each button to your photo mat. You can layer different shades of green on top of your base layer of buttons. Glue down your brown button at the base of the triangle to create the trunk.

4) If the paint on your frame is not yet completely dry, use your heat gun to dry it.

5) Once it's completely dry, follow these steps to emboss the word "Believe":

Stamp your believe stamp onto a versamark ink pad. Then stamp the stamp onto your frame. Then, immediately place your frame onto a piece of cardstock (to catch any excess embossing powder). Pour embossing powder all over the stamped image on your frame. Gently turn your frame over to remove the excess powder. Your image should now be covered with embossing powder. If it's not evenly covered, then repeat this step.

Next, with a tiny paint brush, remove any small amounts of excess powder (if you ended up with "edges" around your image, you want to be sure to brush the powder off the edges of the image).

Immediately after you've added the embossing powder to your image, use your heatgun and watch the magic as your embossing powder melts. Once it's shiny it's done! Ooh, ahhhh!

6) Now put your button tree into the frame and voila! You've got yourself a whimsical piece of holiday decor.

It's seems like there's a lot of steps to this project, but honestly, I created it in less than 1/2 an hour.