DIY Branches Frame

For Mother's Day, I cheated and looked at my Mom's Pinterest account to get an idea of what to get her this year.  Money wasn't really a concern, we always budget for gifts, but I didn't want to buy just anything, I wanted to buy something she truly would enjoy.  Lately she has been focused on buying things for the lake house they just bought and are renovating.  My mom has a theme throughout her lake house of trees, which I must say fits in well with the location of the lake house.  One pin she had inspired this craft, which was fun to make with the help of my sweet sweet hubby.

First, my daughter and I went into the woods down our favorite trail and chose a bunch of thin branches we thought looked interesting.

Next, I look through my stock pile of old picture frames and chose my favorite which happened to be this one. I liked the detail and thought the color of the frame would go well in the lake house.

  I removed the glass, the matte, and the picture.

Then I laid my branches out and found the ones I thought would go best and had the most character that fit in the frame and then we cut them.  Measure each branch and cut it making sure it fits snugly in the frame.  You can use anything useful to cut the branches, my husband chose a pair of pliers.

Lay  the sticks inside the frame and make sure you like the order you place them in. Then take away half of the sticks laying them out in the order you would like to put them back into the frame. Get a paint brush and wet the edge of the frame.

 Then dip each stick in the water before you lay it into the frame.

Next elevate your frame and begin covering the edge of each branch with glue. As you can see I had a very technical set up of 4 seasoning bottles elevating my frame. Do not make the mistake I did and use regular gorilla glue or you will be chipping away the brown excess for an hour! Use clear gorilla glue (it expands so don't be too generous) or clear silicone glue or model glue may also work. 

I linked up to these lovely parties:

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