Thrifted Christmas Tree Dish To Woodland Wall Decor

Hi guys! If you are stopping over for the second time today, welcome back!

Earlier today I shared the week 4 update for The One Room Challenge and I mentioned that my goal for this next week is to get the gallery wall up.

I’ve got a few pieces that I’m still working on for it, but I am really excited to show you all how one of my favorites came together just in time for the monthly Thrift Store Challenge!

The Rules:

 
• Upcycle an item(s) from a thrift store, resale store, or garage sale into a new piece of decor.

 

• There’s no monthly theme.

 

• There’s no budget to stick to.

Meet the Hosts

I picked up this wooden Christmas tree dish last summer and it sat in the garage on the to do list thinking that I would be able to make something cool out of it for Christmas.

Of course I forgot about it and found it a couple of weeks ago while we were cleaning out the garage.

I’ve been racking my brain for woodland themed wall decor ideas for Lucas’ room so my wheels started turning I knew that I could probably incorporate this somehow.

This is one of those projects that I didn’t have a solid plan for. I just kind of winged it but am so happy with how cute it came together!

Supplies Used: (Affiliate links may be provided for convenience.  For more info, see my full disclosure here.) 

• Painters Tape
• Acrylic Paint
• Medium Grit Sandpaper
• Wood Round (not sure what they are called but this is the closest I could find)
• Wood Owl (found at Joanns, similar linked)
• Hot Glue Gun
• D Ring Picture Hanger

I began by taping the tree trunk off with some painters tape since I knew that I wanted to leave that as wood.

I then used a light green acrylic paint on the outside of the tree as well as the top rim.

I let it dry for a few minutes and then went over the inside of the dish with a dark gray acrylic paint.  As you can see I didn’t worry about being too precise next to the edges since I planned on using sandpaper to distress it later on.

I sanded the tree trunk down and found out that I didn’t even need to re-stain it since I really liked the raw and natural feeling that it ended up having.

At this point I honestly became a little stuck.  I first tried to cut a bear silhouette out of a tin pop can, but it didn’t turn out too well.  Then I thought about writing something fun inside.  But I couldn’t figure out what.

Finally I spotted a cute little wooden owl one day at Joanns and inspiration struck! 

I used a light gray paint to paint a moon, stars and tree branch.  I’m no artist by any means, but I’m pretty impressed with my free handing skills here!

Okay, I did use a glass to trace the curves for the moon so it wasn’t 100% freehanded…more like 99%!

I wanted the owl to kind of pop out so I used some hot glue to attach a small wood button and then glued the owl on top of that.

I went back and added a few more twigs to the bottom of my branch to fill out the space a little better.

Once I finally happy with it I attached a D-ring hanger to the back so that I could hang it up on the wall.

I’m glad I decided to leave the owl unpainted because he really stands out against the dark sky scene.

And now for more thrifty goodness!

Check out what my fellow upcyclers created below!