Thanksgiving Family Photos Tree Centerpiece

Materials:
*2 sheets of brown cardstock
*1 sheet of green cardstock
*1 sheet of red cardstock
*Pen
*Scissors
*All purpose adhesive
*Digital photos, computer, and printer
*Markers (optional)

Directions:
*Resize the below template to the desired size and print.  Alternately, if you have a Silhouette CAMEO, you can import this template into Silhouette Studio and have your machine cut out the pieces for you.  For a description of how to use my templates in Silhouette Studio, see this post.

*Trace each of the shapes twice, except for the leaf, which you can trace as many times as you would like.  Trace the tree and the extra set of roots onto brown cardstock, the half oval shape onto green cardstock, and the leaf onto red cardstock.  Cut out your shapes.

*Line up the two tree templates and glue together the top parts, but leave the rooty bottom part unglued, like this (you can see a double image at the bottom, where it's unglued, but not at the top, where it's glued together):

*Slide one of the green half ovals between the two trees and glue the roots to it.  Let dry.

*Glue the extra root pieces to the other green half oval (see above).  Let dry.
*Once everything has dried, cut a slit in the bottom of the glued together tree template, going about halfway up the green half oval.  Cut from the top of the other half oval about halfway down.  Your two pieces should look something like this:

*Fit the two pieces together to make a stand.  Due to the thickness of all of the cardstock pieces, it will be a snug fit.  If the two pieces don't fit together in such a way that the bottoms of the two half oval pieces touch the table, cut the slits a little deeper until they do.  Once you've made sure that they fit appropriately, you can disassemble the stand.

*Crop the photos into squares, paste them into a word document, shrink them down, and print them.  This is what mine looked like when printed onto a 4" x 6" sheet of photo paper:

*Cut out the photos, leaving white space around the edges to give a Polaroid-style look.
*If you want to go for a color-dipped photo look like I did, swipe a marker across the bottom of each one.
*Arrange the photos and leaves on the tree in a desired pattern and then glue down.  Set aside to dry.
*Once it's dry, slide the two half ovals together as before to make the tree stand.