We Love You Mom - Family Tree Shadow Box

This is a little late...Mother's Day was last month, I know. But my mom lives in Arizona and since we knew my parents were coming to visit in June, we decided to collectively celebrate birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day when they got here. One big party if you will! Because of that I didn't want to post this project early and ruin the surprise for my mom - So is born the Mother's Day craft post in June!

I saw this idea on Pinterest but unfortunately I don't know the original creator because when I click on the link it says it was flagged for spam. So if you know who gets credit for this, let me know so I can share here. Anyway, I decided to expand on this idea and make it for my mom from all her kids and grand kids. A family tree of sorts. I started by printing out the words I wanted to use on various colored card stock so that I could mix and match.

I then free handed a tree out of this cute polka dot paper. There is just something fun about the idea of a polka dot tree, don't you think?

 Initially I was going to glue the tree directly to my background but it just didn't pop like I had hoped it would so I glued the tree to an orange piece of paper and cut a border around my original tree. Now it pops!

 From there, I cut leaves out of the words as well as some blank leaves in the same colors. I glued as I went until the tree came together.

 Then I added some accents to the leaves using different markers and some glitter nail polish to make the main message stand out. Using Google Image, I found a chick and squirrel silhouette and printed them off to add some life to the tree.

Chick silhouette - just copy image, paste into Word, size as you want

Squirrel silhouette - just copy image, paste into Word, size as you want

Into the shadow box it went (I got this one for 40% off using a coupon at Hobby Lobby) and here's the finished product:

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Looking for more great Mother's Day gift ideas that are from the heart (and won't break the budget)?  Or maybe you have an idea you would like to share with the world. Check out the Mother's Day Your Way Contest over at NerdWallet - http://www.nerdwallet.com/coupons/contests/