Tree Branch Display

by Pam Uttaro / MT
(Waltham, MA USA)

A friend and I craft holiday ornaments each year to sell at various winter and holiday-time craft fairs throughout our area. We were racking our brains trying to come up with ideas on how best to display our ornaments so that they would move freely & be seen to their best advantage.

We came up with the following, which would also work for things like jewelry, sun catchers and smaller knitted or crocheted items.

We hunted around our yards for nicely shaped and sturdy tree branches. We cut them allowing a long "stem" base in order to mount them securely, then stuck them into coffee cans and galvanized buckets filled with wet plaster. After the plaster set, we glued moss on top to hide the plaster.

The branches can be spray painted and sprinkled with sparkles, wrapped with yarn or colored twine or left natural.

The cans and buckets can be spray painted or covered with fabric and decorated as you like.

We used ribbons, buttons and various trims.

On some of the displays, we left the branches in their natural state and wrapped the buckets with burlap, secured with raffia and hemp twine strung with wooden beads for a rustic look.