Budding Button Tree Picture | Welcome To Nana's

The tree leaf buds are ready to burst out any day now! Celebrate spring with your grands by making a Budding Button Tree Picture.

Let me tell you, this was such a popular and simple craft with the grands. Every age can enjoy this one.

Canvas

I purchased value packs of canvases in the 9x12” size and they worked really well. Any size could work, but you want enough canvas surface to “branch out”. We chose to leave our canvases white, but they could be painted a background color first if desired.

Paint the Tree Trunk and Branches

The grands chose the colors they wanted for their tree trunk and branches. I have to say, I was really surprised at what they envisioned as tree trunks. It was so cool to watch them paint their picture of a tree. Let the paint dry, it doesn’t take long.

Tip: Talk to the grands about trees and how they look when all of their leaves are gone. Encourage them to make a tall tree with branches that spread across the canvas. Explain that the buttons will be the tree leaves and that they will glue them on the branches. I didn’t do this at first and the trees started out like little stubs with tiny branches. With a new vision of what they were going to do, the trees stretched up on the canvases and branched out to fill up the space. Each looked very, very different which was fun.

Button, Button, Who Has the Button?

We dumped most of the buttons out on a couple plates in the middle of the table. I must say that the buttons were so colorful and beautiful out in a pile. It looked like we could eat them with a spoon! I’m such a sucker for buttons. I pick them up whenever I see them at a garage or an estate sale. These buttons came in a one pound package and were quite reasonable in cost.

The kids were so excited to choose some buttons for their Budding Button Tree Picture.

Glue on the Buttons

The tacky glue worked well to hold the buttons onto the canvas. I had a couple bottles between them all so each grand took turns putting several dots of glue on their tree branches and then choosing buttons to place on them.