Family Jewelry Christmas Tree

    Family Jewelry Christmas Tree

Frontgate Jewelry Tree with Pedestal

Did you see the 2012 Christmas issue of Frontgate?  It featured a Jewelry Tree with Pedestal (no longer available) that contains "more than 60 brooches and metallic buttons that are hand-set over shining gold paillettes, making each tree a one-of-a-kind masterpiece."            

When I looked at that tree, I thought about my mother's costume jewelry that I've had for nearly thirty years, and that of my mother-in-law, and the broken and damaged jewelry that I own, and the jewelry I no longer wore or wanted. My sister's and niece's jewelry - jewelry from the family.  This would be a perfect way to use the pieces of jewelry I had accumulated.

I got to thinking that it actually doesn't look like the jewelry tree would be too difficult to make.  I already had a 16 inch styrofoam tree,  a little ceramic urn for the base, gold paint, beads and rhinestones for filler, pins, glitter glue and a glue gun.

I really forgot to take pictures at the start.  This was a labor of love and I wasn't really thinking about photos. To begin, I needed to paint the white stryrofoam tree using FolkArt pure gold metallic paint. It really didn't take much to cover.

Next, I randomly glued the larger jewelry pieces all over the tree.  I broke down the necklaces and bracelets into smaller pieces before gluing.   If any pieces looked too bulky, I pressed them into the foam after gluing. I used pearl beads cut from necklaces (I had lots of these) as fillers around the tree. For a final touch, I used glitter glue to fill in any spaces after I had finished adding all the jewelry pieces.  This gave the tree a sparkly effect. 

This is a photo brooch that belonged to my mother (center with a bow on top)

I added a picture of her to the brooch .   .   .
making this tree very special.

The width of the opening on the urn was the same width as the base of the tree so I had to place the finish tree on top of a little silver dish that I had before putting it onto the urn.

This is truly a keepsake that I will treasure and perhaps pass along  .   .   .

Enjoy!