My Calico Crafts: You Need Art There.

A few weeks ago, I hosted a craft night with some of my girlfriends. I planned for a few painted wine glasses and then we each made a wreath while we waited for the glasses to cure the paint in the oven.

It was a lot of fun and I really hope that everyone else had fun too.

As a part of the evening, a few people who hadn't been to my home before asked to take a tour. As I was showing them around, one friend pointed out that there was a wall in my house that didn't have anything on it. She was right. I needed art on it! At first I just kind of laughed at it. Sure, maybe some day I would work on it and get some art there...

AND THEN IT BEGAN TO HAUNT ME.

I found I would walk by that space looking up wondering what I would put there, what I could create.

AND THEN I BEGAN TO OBSESS.

She was right, I really needed art there.

So began my project for a long, tall, fall button tree.

The wall I wanted to cover was very long and tall, so I went with a very vertical canvas. My plan is to make four of these, one in each season. But that's quite a project, so I just started out with the fall one to see how it went.

This turned out to also be a great project to have my youngest join me on. she enjoyed painting the canvas blue with me.

Once the canvas was all covered in blue and the paint was dry, I began making the tree shape.

Part of the trick with a tree, I think is that in cases like this one, I can always add to the width and thickness of the tree as the process goes on. The more branches in the fall/winter trees, also the better, I think. I started from the bottom establishing the root and base and went up from there adding thickness to the trunk as I went on. After that really basic shape was established, I built off of it with a few bumps and imperfections in the tree's shape to help give it personality.

When my mother passed away, she left behind quite an epic collection of crafting supplies. Included in the piles of things I trucked home in a MOVING TRAILER, it included a vast supply of buttons. I pulled the yellow, orange, red, deep greens and ivory and browns out of the supplies.

Using hot glue, I positioned the "leaves" on the tree one color at a time. Doing it this way helped me balance the color scheme and be sure that I didn't go too heavy on one color or the other. when I was closer to done, I did take a step back to see if there was a color I would like to add more of, and did end up placing a few more reds in the grouping.

Clustering many of the buttons together also added fullness to the design of the tree. I also made sure to stray away from the ends of branches and place some of the button leaves in areas where they were light in the design. I also trailed the buttons down one side of the canvas to look like they are coming off the tree for fall.