Yard Card

Materials:

corrugated plastic board available from sign stores and hardware stores
Folk Art Durable Colors paint
- Fairway Green #53319
- White #53352
- Midnight #53364
two or three, two-inch sponge paintbrushes
tape (purchase colors, or paint over the tape)
old coffee cans to hold water
palette knife
electric knife or jig saw (for cutting plastic cardboard)
miniature lights
adhesive-backed Velcro
large screwdriver (for punching holes for lights)
outdoor extension cord
newspaper
black marking pen
bracing (such as tomato stakes, etc. which goes into the ground to support the card)
round lids of various sizes to decorate the tree
star (for top of tree)

Steps:

Prep
1. Draw a tree pattern on newspaper and cut it out.

2. Position pattern on the corrugated plastic board and trace around it with marking pen.

3. Using an electric knife or skill saw carefully cut out the pieces of the tree (figure A).

4. Punch from front to back the needed number of holes in each section where the lights will be placed (figure B).

Painting
1. Using a large sponge paintbrush, basecoat all three sections with green paint. Let dry and cure 24 hours.

2. Apply white paint at the bottom of the branches, green paint in the middle, and Midnight at the top.

3. Wipe the sponge brush and blend the colors together, pulling from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top (figure C). Let dry and cure.

4. Varnish with two or more coats of water-based varnish and allow to dry.

Assembly
1. To create the card background, cut a 2' x 4' piece of plastic corrugated board. I used blue board, which came in a 4' x 8' sheet, so I cut it in half.

2. Flyspeck the background board with white paint if desired to give the effect of snow. This can be done by flipping paint from the bristles of an old toothbrush onto the board, or using a flyspecking tool.

3. Apply Velcro to each section of the tree so the sections will stick to each other (figure D).

4. Make spacers to hold the tree pieces off the card using small, stacked-and-glued -together squares of corrugated plastic board (figure E). Cut Velcro pieces to fit on the top and bottom of these spacers. Stick the cut piecse to the top and bottom of the spacers.

5. Push the lights through the holes that have been punched in the card (figure F).

Attach the spacers made in step 4 to the card using the Velcro (figure G).

6. Using the Velcro, fasten the tree to the spacers (figure H).

6. Write your greeting ("Holiday Greetings" etc.) with a large permanent ink marking pen.

7. Using Velcro, fasten star to the top of the tree. Decorate the tree, if desired, using painted jar or bottle lids in assorted sizes. Add fun touches, if desired, such as strings of popcorn to feed the birds.

8. Securely anchor tree in yard. Use an outdoor extension cord to light up the yard card greeting.