$1 garage sale tree makeover

Here is an after close up of a tree I found this summer at a garage sale. I started with the after, because the before was so ugly, I might have lost your attention.

It was definitely in the “walk on by” category of garage sale finds.

Here it is in all of its glory. But if you look closely, there is potential.

Those are little vintage shiny brites that were used on the original creation. And the tiny, wooden train isn’t that bad. There was a salvage pile, a toss pile, and a package up and sell at the mall pile.
I also cut off all the non working lights.

The next step in this glow up was white spray paint for a flocked look. I painted the board it sits on too. After the paint dried, I carefully spritzed it with spray adhesive and generously sprinkled mica on it. After it dried, I shook it upside down to get out the loose flakes.

Then, it was time for the fun stuff. Batting was wrapped around the tree to create snow as well as something to glue deer hooves into. I cut some sticks from my yard and made trees from them, plus added some bottle brush trees.

The wood itself wouldn’t have been easy to attach anything to. By using the batting, I was able to give the skinny legs of the deer and the twigs a better base for glue. I also tried to cluster them, so I could glue everything to each other for even more stability.

Keep in mind, for any glue project, the surface you attach something to is only as good as what you attach that to. For instance, if I hadn’t really, really, really glued the batting to the wooden circle really, really good, it wouldn’t matter how much glue I used on the deer and trees. If the batting came up, they’d fall off.

So, there was plenty of glue underneath it all too. And lots oozing about here and there. I gave it a coat of mica flakes to hide that mess.

The gold and silver packages got reused, and tied up with brown string with little, vintage bells.