Giant Autumn Tree - Child-Directed Wall Art

The other day we were having a lazy morning at home. It's been so busy around here lately with family and school commitments. I ran across this blog post on The Artful Parent that had a picture of a giant paper tree on the wall. I showed it to Meg and we both agreed we needed one of these on our wall. The one on the linked blog looks to be made of brown paper. We didn't have any on hand, so I gave Meg a few options. We could run to Home Depot to get some, we could use the plain white butcher paper we have in the studio and just have a white tree (wouldn't that be pretty for winter?), or we could paint our butcher paper brown. My girl heard paint, and all other discussion was set aside! :D

Meg told me which colors to squirt into the empty pie tin each time we filled it (yellow-brown-green, orange-brown-black, and brown-red-white), and she used sponges to paint a looooooong stretch of paper.

After it dried, we brought it inside, and Meg cut it into a trunk and branches (with a little guidance from me). We pieced everything on the family room floor as we went, then taped all the pieces together with Scotch tape.

I then taped the whole thing to the wall, again with Scotch tape, because it's what we had handy. That part was a little intimidating, but not too tricky once I got the trunk secured. Our walls aren't heavily textured, so the Scotch tape is holding fine. If you have more texture on your walls, you might try masking tape, push pins, blue tack, or staples.

We used faux leaves from Dollar Tree (50/$1) to decorate the branches. I also had some fake maple leaves with letters glued on spelling out Meg's name left over from last year's Little Bear party, so we taped those up too.

Overall, the tree may not be as pretty as our inspiration piece, but it's Meg's art from start to finish, and we think that's beautiful!