Recycle My Tree Round 3} Tree Trunk Art

Today I cooked 16 pounds of spaghetti! Crazy right?

I have a whole bunch of lettuce to chop and wash too!

Tomorrow is the Pinewood Derby, I've been prepping for that! Excited to share my creations soon!

Today I wanted to show you the 'pis de resistance' of my Christmas Tree Recycling.

Look here for Round 1 and Round 2.

This is what I originally envisioned when I thought about re-purposing my tree.

Let's go back to where we began... clipping off all of the boughs,

then cutting my tree into pieces, via chainsaw... thanks burley lumberjack Matt!

Do you miss the smell of your tree? I know we have tried many ways to try to extend the smell of our tree to no avail. Wanna know what makes it smell? Cutting it! I may leave bottom branches on next year and slowly cut them off as the weeks go by. So fragrant!

I was in heaven cutting my tree apart!

Tanget, sorry!

My next step was sanding one side of all these pieces. I used my little hand sander to do that.

If you wanted you could put a finish on at this point, or ModPodge to shiny it up a bit.

I left mine raw. I may put something on later, but I like this look.

Next I decided how I wanted to display this.

Originally I thought canvas, but the wood is too heavy, the canvas ended up bowing.

Hmmm, then I thought I'd put it on glass, that would be really cool too, just leave it floating! Then as you hang it you'd just see wall color around it. Love that idea too.

Ultimately I went with metal.

I like the contrast of the cold metal with the natural wood.

This is a 16x20 size.

If I had a larger size I'd have used that. I like the idea of it making more of a statement floating on a big piece of metal. BUT, this is what I had, I went with it.

I arranged starting with the small pieces on the inside.

I love how I arranged it the very first time, then I reworked it a little (mistake) and could never get it exactly back to where I started.

Lesson: go with your original gut design.