Butterfly Tree

We have a seasonal "tree" in our house, which is actually just a branch in a jar. We decorate it with seasonal items throughout the year. Christmas ornaments at holiday time, leaves in the fall, flowers and insects in the spring etc. We find and make the decorations. Changing the decorations is always so much fun and something we look forward to. My daughter wanted a butterfly theme for her 4th birthday and we decided that the craft at the party would be a butterfly tree. This way, our guests could make something at the party and remake it at home throughout the year by changing the ornaments.

We used baby food jars for the base. We put a small ball of modeling clay in each jar to secure the branch. We stuck a small branchy stick (most were about 12"-18" tall) into the clay and placed little pebbles in the jar. We collected some of the pebbles and used clear glass globs as well. I cut out about a thousand butterflies (slight exaggeration) from colored cardstock and colored paper. Reusing previously painted or decorated paper would be really nice too). To cut the butterflies I simply folded the paper in half and cut a variety of wing shapes along the fold. They ranged in size from 1" to 4". I cut pipe cleaners in half and using one half per butterfly, I folded the pipe cleaner and secured it to the butterflies making a body and twisting the top into antennae which would later act as hooks to hook the butterflies to the tree.

The day of the party we set the empty trees out with plenty of bare butterflies and lots of geometric stickers. We used ring shaped hole reinforcers and colorful round stickers as well as a few sparkly gem stickers. The little ones decorated the wings with stickers and hung them on their trees. The ages ranged from 2 to 6 and it was fun for all of them.

The picture shows our seasonal tree (the larger one) as well as the one we made at the party. My daughter has reworked hers several times--adding drawings to the wings, rearranging and so on. We might be making changing our butterflies to fish in a few weeks!