Wedding Song Lyric Tree

I am very excited to be sharing this project with you.  I must admit that I did not create this idea.  I came across it on Pinterest and decided to make one.  Of course, I had to go to my mom's house because I knew she'd have everything I need, except for the frame.   I purchased the frame at Michael's (pre-matted with a shadowbox effect) and then started on the project.  

The first thing I did was find the lyrics for my Wedding Song -- "I Swear" by All 4 One.  I arranged it in Microsoft Word, removing all of the hard returns and then copying and pasting until it filled up the page.  Also, I set the orientation to landscape.   I made the margins as small as the program would allow and then printed it on a nice, heavy card stock.  For the tree, I used the Cricut Zooballoo cartridge.  My mom gave me a quick lesson using the Cricut Craft Room software and I was able to stretch the tree and make it as big as I could, without extending past the printed text margins.  I can't believe I got this to work on my first try!  

For the hearts, I used Grungeboard.  I've never heard of this before and I think the possibilities are endless with this material!  I used an Original Sizzix die.  I don't know the name but it has 3 hearts on it.  I used the largest heart, in the Cuttlebug.  I just used the die and two B plates.  I painted the hearts with red scrapbook paint by Making Memories.  So far, so good!   The textured card stock grabbed my attention and I knew it would make a perfect background.  I'm not sure how well it shows up in the pictures.  I applied foam sticky squares to the back of the tree and placed it on the background.  I let the paint on the hearts dry and then added alpha stickers, representing my husband's and my initials.  Then I tied the bakers twine to the tree limb and added foam squares to the back of the hearts, pulled the string to keep it straight and then stuck the heart down and snipped off the excess twine.