Happy New Year - The End of our Tree Project

One of my favorite projects this year - and also for our family and to anyone how visits our house - has been our tree. Unfortunately just before Christmas due to the strength and persistence of our #3 bunny our Christmas tree had a nasty accident.

We only lost two ornaments and the stick snapped in several places. No small child was harmed in the accident - but we all felt a little sad.

We had all been stuck inside due to snow falling outside when the incident happened. Feeling a little sad we decided to rescue what we could of the now year long project. My eldest bunny really loves to use scissors so her paper snowflakes made a perfect decoration. The vase and branch is now on the kitchen counter - I don't put it past #3 to make it up there and demolish it some more - but so far it has stayed out of his reach.

Here is a little recap of our tree.

Valentine Tree

Swedish Easter Tree

Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree

Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree 

Halloween Tree

Thanksgiving Tree

Christmas Tree

Wish you and your family a wonderful 2014 & thank you so much for reading.

Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree

What we do with this branch we found in the garden never ceases to amaze me. In case you have missed the progression of our year long tree project check out the other trees we have made so far.

Swedish Easter Tree
Valentine Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree

This idea came to me as I was washing up looking out of the window and looking at butterflies flutter around the garden in the sunshine.

The colors in our butterfly tree are really amazing. 

As you can tell we made a lot of coffee filter butterflies for this tree (over 60!)

We decorated out coffee filters by various methods. The traditional markers & water, dipping the filters in liquid watercolors & glitter. 

 Folded & dipped in liquid water color. 

Water soluble markers & water. 

Dipping in liquid watercolors was by far the preferred method.

We had to hang washing lines all over the kitchen to dry all the filters. We also experimented about how we hung the filters to ensure we got lots of different results. 

Glitter glue added a magical sparkle and prevented the spread of the liquid water colors. Folding coffee filters and hanging them together or on top of each other gave different - but beautiful effects - colors leaking from all angles.

Even my 2 year old bunny enjoyed the activity.

Not very precise - although she really is trying - just look how carefully she is holding that filter. 

Our kitchen towels were soaked but ever so pretty once we had finished.

My eldest wanted to make butterflies with two filters at once. It was a genius idea - giving us some very large and full butterflies.

And we made some dragon flies too. 

You might be wondering what became of all those pretty tissue paper cherry blossoms. Well my girls loved gathering the 'fallen petals' and they are still playing with them. I'm thrilled - this tissue paper has had 3 uses so far - wrapping gifts to pretty tree blossoms to endless games of gathering, grouping and carrying around the pretty posies.

We left our little egg carton caterpillar on the tree - obviously one day he will turn into a butterfly too.

Happy butterfly spotting this summer!

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Please do not forget about the charity I Spy quilt - we are still looking for fabric 4"x4"scrap donations.