Since I went back to college I haven't had as much time to woodwork or refinish furniture lately. The love is there, but the timing is off for me to do more projects. I did recently do a Super Saturday for the ladies at my church. Super Saturday is a day where we meet at the church and several of us who make crafts teach the ladies and help them make a take home project at cost. 
These are the three projects I did. The pillow, the trees and the tags. I am going to show you how I made the trees. I started out with long strips (4ft long by 8" tall) of inexpensive backing board and I glued several strips of small trim to it until it covered the 8" of height. 
I then decided what angles to cut the wood trees. 
After lining it up I matched the angle on my miter saw. In cutting them all from a long strip, it saved time and energy from just cutting out one piece of trim out at a time. 
I ended up repeating the glue and cut process until I had enough for all the orders. 
Some of the wood trim didn't want to stay down. This is where having a lot of clamps came in handy. 
I was playing around with the trim after I was done. It would make a neat ceiling medallion if it was all done in the same pattern and lined up and caulked just right. 
I would say the Super Saturday was a success. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the ladies finishing the trees. I was jumping in and helping those who needed help. 
With the tags, some kept them the natural wood color and some painted theirs white. 
The tags and the trees were definitely the most popular of the three crafts that I did. 
Again, I am sorry I didn't take more pictures of the ladies painting and staining their trees. I was up to my elbows in paint and dark wax. To do the base of the tree, I used a square wood dowel and an old wooden spool. The spools were donated by my mother-in-law. (thanks Shirley!)
The square dowel was clamped and glued to the back of the tree. I used the blue end dowel at Home Depot and I drilled a hole bigger in the spool with a 3/8" drill bit. To fit a square dowel into a round hole, I used my belt sander to round the corners off of the dowel to make it round. I then added glue and used a rubber mallet to hammer it in tight.
I used Behr white paint for the tree and then I used Annie Sloan dark wax to go over it for the example trees. Annie Sloan wax is very expensive so I made my own dark wax to bring for the Super Saturday projects. It looked and worked identical and was less than 1/4 of the price. Again, sorry for the lack of photography! I got busy working and I didn't remember. I only snapped a few of the ladies with their tags. It was a successful day and it was fun to show & help the ladies how to do a new skill.
Have a great day! Love Lori
