Tutorial - Snow-covered fir/pine trees

This is a tutorial to make something like this.

This was done free-hand. I learned how to this from the 'glitter lady' at a demo night that our local stamp store was having I think a couple of Christmases ago.  (That lady, I later learned, was Deanna Pannell, creator of Dee's Distinctively Dies and Glitter Ritz.)  This is so cool and so amazingly easy that I want to share this with you. These are the tools and materials that you need: 

1. Craft glue – most regular type of craft glue will work I think, e.g. Aleene’s Tacky Glue, Elmer’s Glue All, etc.—we do NOT want the thick kind. I used the Sobo glue pictured above. 

 2. White acrylic paint (you only need a small amount – approx. 25 drops). Any brand will do. I use the one above, because it was on sale--LOL. 

 3. A small empty bottle with a very fine tip (.9 mm aperture). You can buy these at your art or craft store. Got mine at Michaels (in their fabric paint section). 

 4. Glitter—white and/or transparent with highlights--I prefer cool highlights. (Or any colour glitter you want.) The type of glitter is used is Jewel Glitter Ritz Micro Fine Glitter. 

 5. Card stock—the heavier the better. It is ALMOST impossible to find a glue that dries white. Although your craft glue is white in colour, they will dry clear—which is preferable at any other time, as you don’t really want to see globs of glues on your craft projects. But for our purposes here, we want a glue that dries white. The small amount of white paint is required to make your own dries-white glue. If you want the snow on your trees to look white, you need this glue. Otherwise your trees will have a tint of your paper colour. I've taken pictures to show you the difference. This was done using white glitter. The one on the left is with clear glue and the

 

one on the right with white glue.

This one was done using tranparent glitter with cool highlights.

Again the one at the left is with clear glue and the right-side one is with white glue. See what I mean?

If however you want to do your trees in any other colour of glitter, then clear glue is just fine to use.

So a little preparation ahead of time. Fill your bottle about ¾ full with the craft glue and add about 25 drops of the white acrylic paint. Shake it well to mix. 

 Basically the trees are made by making teardrops of glue placed haphazardly to form a picture of a tree and then covering it in glitter. Practice a few strokes of forming tear drops on a scrap piece of paper, by squeezing out a small dot and then dragging it to make the tail. Now, it’s easier to drag down than up, so they’re upside-down teardrops. So what you will be doing is making the tree upside down. ( If you find it easy to do it the other way, by all means, do so. There’s no set rules to this–whatever works for you.) The first 3 dabs of glue you’re going to place on your paper is a guideline to how tall and how wide you want the tree to be. Since it’s easier to SHOW you how to do this rather than tell you, I’ve done a couple of short videos here. I've taken these with my camera, so they're amateurish. I mounted my camera on a tripod, focus it on my craft table and stood behind the setup. I was trying to set my eyes both on what I was doing on the table and on the screen a the same time. LOL. This was fun to do. Had to do several retakes before I ended up with these 2 vids. (There's no oral instruction --I don't like the sound of my own voice. Whenever I hear it coming out of some kind of device, I think I sound...funny, lol.  

For the first tree:                    

                                            

The paper will buckle a bit due to the wet glue, that’s why the heavier the paper the better. But when the glue dries, the paper will flatten itself out...not 100% though. Ideally, you should wait until the glue dries before adding more trees, but I was too impatient. For additional tree(s):                                                                                   

 And you just keeping adding more trees until you get the picture that you want.

When the glue has dried, you can brush the excess glitter back to your container. This is what my end product looks like.

I used this group of trees as a background for Tilda in this card. If you want to see the posting for this card you can click here. I hope you've found this tutorial informative. Have fun with it. PS. Make sure you clean your glue bottle tip as soon as you're not using it. The glue dries fast, but its water soluble. Unscrew the tip from your bottle and put it under running water until all the glue is gone.

PPS. If you decide to give it a try and make a card or cards with your trees, I would love to see it/them. (Send me a link.)