Fall Mantel and DIY Gratitude Tree for Thanksgiving

Happy Weekend buddies! Today, I am sharing a special little project I did for my little family. Here is our simple fall mantel and our DIY Gratitude Tree we made for the month of November. I had some fun trying the new Dremel Micro 8050 for this project and will show you how it gave this an extra special touch.

One thing that is really important to Dave and I as parents is to instill the importance of gratitude in our children. So, for the month of November, I wanted to have a present and open dialog about this in our home. We came up with the idea of the “gratitude tree” to help keep the conversation going.

For the 30 days of November, at the end of each day…probably around the dinner table…we are going to have one family member write down something they are thankful for, an act of kindness they showed, a prayer request, or simply something they love. We made 30 felt leaves and have a marker handy to start writing them down. The tree will be a reminder in our home of this and I hope the kids enjoy this idea.

To add something more to our tree, I made some wooden ornaments with our names on them. To me, one of the things I am most thankful for in this world is our little family. I played around with the Dremel Micro and here is how I engraved our names into the wood. I went for a rustic look and wanted the printing to reflect that. Almost like a burned in look.

The Dremel Micro 8050 can tackle a lot of things. The Micro 8050 is also fully compatible with all Dremel rotary tool accessories.

Here’s a little breakdown of the attachments that come with it.

As you can see it can do a lot of different things on all kinds of surfaces like plastic, wood, metal, etc. For the purpose of this project I used the engraving attachments. I chose the smallest engraving bit and got started.

I practiced for another project by writing cursive in pencil and tracing over it with the engraving tip. I found that using it at speed 20 was the sweet spot for the wood I selected.

I used the same method on these little wooden triangles that you can pick up at your nearest craft store. I just wrote our names in pencil and engraved over the writing with the Dremel Micro.

The built-in LED light is perfect for detail work like this. It casts a clean and light as you are working.

It was really easy to use the engraving bit and all I had to do once I finished is clean the sawdust off. I traced back over the engraving once I was done to darken it a bit. I just added a band of gold paint at the bottom for a little extra touch.

Now our little gratitude tree sits in our home ready for a month of giving, reflecting, and thankfulness.

Dremel wants to celebrate its fans’ brilliant projects, work and ideas! Now through October 12, share, tweet or post photos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that depict your brilliant ideas using the hashtag#MyBrilliantIdeaSweeps for the chance to win weekly prizes, including free tools and handmade gifts, or the grand prize: a custom-engraved Honda scooter and a Micro 8050. Visit http://www.facebook.com/dremel for rules and to learn more.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.