Two Little Lovers Sitting in a Tree

I saw this idea on Pinterest, and it really appealed to me.  I decided that I wanted to make it, and since it was a few days until Valentine's Day, it worked out perfectly.  I put it together in just a few hours at craft day, and I think it turned out really cute!

The original idea can be found here:  http://www.thedatingdivas.com/tara/two-little-lovers-decor/   I modified it a little bit.  The tree is cut out of paper that is printed with the lyrics of YOUR special song, whatever that may be.  Ours happens to be "Can You Feel the Love Tonight."  So the first step, if you wanted to make one of these, is to find the lyrics to YOUR special song and type them up.  You can find lyrics to most songs at this website: http://www.azlyrics.com/    Go through the lyrics and put special words or phrases in bold, italics, or different fonts to make them stand out.  Once you are done, copy and paste the lyrics all over the page.  It should look something like this:

(only without the tree yet).  I tried it out with different font sizes, but I found that the smaller font (11 for me) fit the most words of the song on the tree.  I also played around with the margins, so I could get the words and phrases showing on the tree like I wanted them to do.  When I was done with my lyric page, I printed it out on white cardstock. 

 

 The next step is to put the lyric paper into the printer and print out the tree template on top of the lyrics.  The tree template can be downloaded here: http://www.thedatingdivas.com/tara/two-little-lovers-decor/  (which is the same link as above, just scroll down the page a little bit and download the pdf file).  It will look like this:

There won't actually be any words on the template.  I just printed mine out on scratch paper first, so I could hold it over the words and make sure I liked the words that were in the tree outline before I printed them all together on the cardstock.  It will look like the picture with the words and tree above once it is all printed out.  Then you have to cut the tree out.  I just used scissors, but the website recommended an exacto knife.  They also have a print out for the hearts on their website.  It will look like this printed out:

It also has instructions for the craft on this sheet.  After you cut the hearts out, you need to ink around the edge of the tree and hearts.  This helps them to stand out on the white page.  Inking is pretty easy.  A make up wedge and a black ink pad works fine, although I actually have wedged ink pads. 

 

This is how the cut out items looked when I was finished inking them.  You just lightly dab the ink all around the edges. Obviously I did not do a perfect job, but it still looks cute all put together.

The next step is to glue the cutouts to white cardstock, and then attach the larger hearts to the tree with ribbon or twine.  If you use glue dots, it makes the cut outs stand off the page a bit for some dimension.  I actually use both glue dots and a glue stick.  I used red ribbon, to loop around the branch and glue under the hearts.  The website used a red/white twine. The twine looked cute, but I didn't want to go shopping - I just wanted to use what I had on hand.  I like how it looked with the ribbon too.  Once it was all glued together, I put it into my frame.  I did have to trim the cardstock a little bit to get it to fit.

 The smaller hearts are actually glued on the outside of the glass.  This makes it pop out a bit.  I wrote our names on the hearts with a sharpie pen, and then used glue dots to attach the hearts onto the glass over the larger hearts.

The website has another download to print out a tag to  go with the framed picture.  I printed them out, but they were way too big for my liking.  If I had taken time, I probably could have shrunk one of the tags down to the size I needed, but it was easier to just re-type the words myself.

Instead of a tag, I just glued the words in the lower corner of the frame.  That way it didn't detract from the tree and hearts, but it still gave my work of art a title :)

I really liked how it turned out, and I will be putting it in our room.  To my husband's credit, he actually did notice that the tree was made out of the words to OUR song without any prompting on my part.  My ten year old daughter noticed that too, which impressed me, because I didn't know my kids knew what OUR song was.  I guess I know that my parents' special song is "More."  So maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that my kids know mine.