It's a beautiful tree from an Etsy shop called NouWall.
It is so pretty and it's such a cool way to display all those old family pictures and I want one!
I was not interested in spending the money to order one when surely I could figure out a way to make one. Well, I figured out a way! The great thing about this way is that it's not paint and it's not vinyl so it's not permanent, if you don't want it to be. You can do this in an apartment and not fear that it's going to rip of some paint like vinyl can sometimes do. (For the record, NouWall states that their vinyl is removable, however suggest that you test it in an area first.)
My Tree: Ta-Ta!
Here are the supplies I used for my tree:
-black contact paper (bought mine on amazon)
-printer paper
-printer
-scissors
-tape
-image of a tree
-credit card
-picture frames
-pictures
-patience
Step one: Find an image you like.
I just went to the sites that were selling the tree decals and found the image that I liked from their catalog and downloaded the image. Silhouette type images work the best for this type of job. It doesn't matter if it has watermarks and such on it because you are just using it as a template. This is the image that I used from NouWall:
Step Two: Go to Bigblockposters.com and upload your image and create a poster.
Bigblockposter.com is a free website that enlarges your pictures so you can download and print them on your own. The idea behind a "block poster" is that you have a poster made up of many "blocks" or in this case, sheets of paper. You simply upload your image and then say what demensions you want it to be blown up to. The dimensions are based on paper size you are using. I had mine set to landscape and went as large as they could go, 10 sheets by 9 sheets of standard size printer paper. Your image will then be available for download in the PDF format.
Just a heads up, your image will probably be very pixelated since it was blown up so much. It really doesn't matter for our purposes because you just need a rough idea of what the tree looks like so you aren't going to be creating one completely from scratch. If you are making a poster that you want to hang up and enjoy, you would need to find a high quality picture with a large pixel amount.
Step 3: Print out the block poster.
This would seem to be a simple task, but let me give you a few tips:
-Regular printer paper is fine. I used cardstock and you really don't need to, I thought the added weight would be helpful, but it really wouldn't matter. It's cheaper to use regular paper.
-The paper couldn't all fit in my printer at one time, so I made sure that I was sitting by it to refill it as it was getting low so that the printing process wouldn't stop and get messed up.
- Number the papers as they are getting printed off. I used a letter and number system for columns and rows.
- The image will not be printed to the edge of the page, so there will be some margins
Set 4: Lay out the Papers.
You will need a large space for this. I moved some furniture to be able to do this. You can also just do it in a few rows at a time, but I wanted to get an idea of what it looked like.
Step 5: Weed out blank papers.
There are going to be a lot of blank pages!
Step 6: Tape the papers together in strips.
Since contact paper comes in a roll, you'll want to tape the pages together in strips that would fit on the contact paper so you can cut it out. Since there are margins on the papers, it's really easy to overlap and tape. You will want to cut off one side of the margin so you don't have a white stripe though. What I did was tape the trunk together, then I taped two rows at a time together of the tree branches. **Mark on the branches somewhere what row it is because after cutting out all the rows, it will get a little confusing what row it is since the number/letter assignment has been cut off.**
Step 7: Tape row a of paper to the contact paper and start cutting!
This is a long and tedious task. My husband helped me out on one small section and gave up on it. The next day we celebrated my 31st birthday and he surprised me with a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine that's been on my Pinterest wish list for a long time. He had it over-nighted from Amazon because he finally understood how much hard work I have been putting in on cutting out wall quotes with an x-acto knife.
Just remember that you don't have to follow exactly what the template says. This is YOUR tree. No one will know what you made a mistake. Contact paper is not vinyl, you can reposition it and cut it after it's up on the wall too!
** You may want to mark on the back of the contact paper what row and where the brank was located (second from the left, ect) since paper tends to fall off unless you retape it on.**
Step 8: Tape up the contact paper to the wall.
This is the part that's like a puzzle. The trunk is the best part to start at. Place it where you want it and tape it to the wall. Don't tear off the paper and stick the contact paper to the wall just yet. You want to get a feel of how big and where the tree will go. There will be adjustments that you have to make before putting it on the wall for real. This is the part where all the labeling and separated piles come in handy. It's also a good idea to have a small image of your tree available so you can envision it as you are putting the pieces together. I know for a fact that my tree isn't put together correctly, but I really don't care. I like how it looks and no one else knows that it's not what it was originally going to look like. (Okay, so all of you know since it's supposed to look just like the image I found on Pinterest, but SHHH!)
Step 9: Step back and make some tweaks.
I had to move mine a few inches to the right. I also didn't like how some of the branches looked, so I thinned them out and eliminated a lot of leaves. (Okay, so I eliminated a lot of leaves as I was cutting in general because they were super tedious to cut out!)
Step Ten: Peal off the backing of the contact paper and hang it to the wall!
Like when taping it up, I would recommend starting at the bottom. Another tip is to not completely press the contact paper to the wall just yet. You may want to move it just a little and it's easier if it's not completely stuck on the wall yet. The branches WILL get tangled up and stuck together. Just breath and know that with some slow movements and patience it will all become untangled. My contact paper was able to be pulled apart after getting stuck together and it was no big deal. Frustrating, but no big deal. Once you get it all how you like it, take the credit card and run it over the contact paper and get all the air bubbles out and flatten the contact paper to the wall.
Step 11: Hang up picture frames
I had a lot of picture frames laying around because I always wanted a photo wall and have been hoarding frames for years. After some thinking, I decided I would go with the black frame look, rather than the random colors of frames. I did splurge on a $10 set of 10 black frames from Michael's because I wanted shapes other than the normal rectangles. The set I got had two ovals, a circle and a square, along with the boring rectangles.
Step 12: Enjoy!!
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