Hat and Costume Tree Rack Tutorial

My 2 year old daughter loves hats. Pirate hats, cowgirl hats, funny animal hats, princess crowns....I could go on and on. If it goes on your head, Scarlett is happy. She's also a fan of dress-up and has two wonderful grandmas who constantly buy her costumes. Needless to say, she has a whole lot of stuff and nowhere to put it. Enter: the Hat and Costume Tree.

I normally refuse to do any craft type shopping without a coupon, but the growing mountain of dress-up paraphernalia was making me crazy and I headed over to Lowe's. I bought a 2' by 4' sheet of wood, 3 packs of curved hooks and 6' of chain to hang the costumes from. I was also super lucky to get a big can of $32 mistinted blue wall paint (which happened to be the color I was looking for) for $5! I already had some acrylic paint and Mod Podge at home, so it wasn't completely new materials. :) Here's the fun part. I took my sister along with me for supplies and we got a little carried away with the paint samples...

I started off by painting the wood. I ended up using 2 coats. *note to self-next time don't pick a windy fall day to paint outside!*

Forgive the mess!

 Once it was dry, I took a pencil and sketched out two tree shapes along the left and right sides of the board.

Next, I measured out 3 rows of 8 hooks each on the front and marked with pencil for the hooks. I also started drilling the holes. Yay! Power tools! Once my holes were drilled, I used acrylic paint to color in the tree trunks. I tried my best to paint it on thick, but ended up happy with the texture so I didn't bother with a second coat.

I took the paint samples from Lowe's and divided them into two piles, greenish and red/brownish. I decided to do a summer tree and a fall tree. After I had two piles, I started to cut out leaf shapes from the swatches. With a little Mod Podge, I started layering on rows of leaves. *I screwed in the hooks that were going to be in the trees before I started with the leaves*

After the trees were finished and the glue had dried, I took my trusty MP and coated a sealing coat all over the tree tops to keep them there and make them glossy. :)

While that was drying, I painted on a few butterflies, flowers and a caterpillar as decoration and screwed in the rest of the hooks.

Here's the mostly finished project:

And here it is in use:

I haven't attached the chains to the sides of the rack yet, but I haven't picked up any toddler hangers for her costumes yet either, so they are currently in a reusable shopping bag for now... *I decided not to hang up the chains. She's too little to use hangers anyway.

Hope you like it!

I've linked up here: