If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your walls without paint, I found something amazing recently. Using simple, cheap supplies you can make a beautiful tree mural for that boring wall in your living room, kid’s room, wherever! Originally made by artist Kathryn Anderson of KAndeArt, the string trees she created were all original designs she placed in her own home. And with some simple instructions, you’ll have a blossoming new tree of your own!
The materials needed are simply push pins, yarn or string, and a thimble, because your thumbs are going to get worn out pushing all those pins in! But if you’re feeling extra creative, you can use any color of yarn or string to make any kind of tree. Want a Christmas tree? Use forest green, thick yarn and create a pine/spruce tree shape. You can even hang decorations from the string or have kids draw decorations and tack them to your tree on the wall! Looking for something more radical? You can always use fun tie-dye yarn to make something more interesting.
source: KAndeArt
Personally, I liked the idea of using wooden pushpins to make the body of the tree to give the project more realism. You can find wooden push pins at Walmart, The Container Store and larger ones online at Amazon. You can easily find the yarn at Walmart as well, or any other craft or fabric store.
To get started, simple place pushpins in the wall in the general shape of the base of a tree trunk. You can do roots, or just straight down to your baseboards.
Now, as you move up the wall, create the spots where you would like to begin branches. Move out to the left and right of the tree and place pushpins as far out as you want your branches to reach. You can make this very interesting by having the branches crawl around a corner, or up onto the ceiling. Once you have most of your pushpins set (don’t fret, you can always add some later as you’re filling it in), begin wrapping the yarn by tightly winding it two or three times around your first pin then moving on to wrap the yarn around other pins to create the look of bark.
Once you begin doing branches, Kathryn has recommended not being too linear. Overlap branches, wrap around the same pin multiple times, jump around with the string, even make knots in your bark by making a ring of pushpins and wrapping the yarn around them several times.
source: KAndeArt
Kathryn decorated some of hers with Christmas lights wrapped in them. She also has used framed pictures of birds hung up so they looked as though they were perched on the branches. Another creative idea would be to put photos of your family amongst the branches and create a family tree with your kids as a project.
What are some other great ideas for different trees or decorating with trees that you can think of? Would you consider a wall “tree” instead of a traditional Christmas tree?
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