DIY Project: The Thumbprint Tree

There is a trend going around where instead of guestbooks people user thumbprint trees as a guestbook. It’s art that your guest make essentially and it gives you a record of who was there.

I fell in love with the idea a long time ago. We have a guestbook already but I really love the idea of these trees so I decided to go ahead and do both options. The way I see it, the thumbprint tree will create some pretty art for us and the guestbook will function at both the US and NZ parties whereas the thumbprint tree won’t. That justifies it, right?

Since I’m crunched for time I thought I might buy one on Etsy. But then I learned they range in price from $25 – $100 with most being in the $50 to $75 range. Um, no. We are on a budget so I decided to just make my own.

Supplies including the hardboard and the sharpie cost a total of $6 and it only took me a little over an hour to finish.

I’ve always loved drawing trees so this was fun for me. I like the final product and how it looks. I might go over some places once more with a sharpie to make it darker but overall I think it looks great.

(It looks darker than it seems in the above photo. You can’t see the individual strokes without a flash but that’s why I’ll double sharpie it.)

Of course once I finished I started worrying about whether there was enough space for people’s thumbprints or not and if the tree looked alright or not… I worry too much. I know. People are smart, they will figure it out.

The perfectionist artist in me wants to keep critiquing it, but the budget bride in me is super excited about how awesome it looks and how much better it will be with everyone’s fingerprints.

I think I want to use purples and blues and maybe a green for the leaves. It should turn out beautiful and I can’t wait to see it finished and hanging in our new apartment!