Chinese New Year's Influenced Prosperity Tree

While shopping for groceries in February, there were various Chinese New Year's decorations hanging up. This year was the first time that I saw a marvelous Prosperity Tree! It was an image of an orange tree and I loved the paper craft image with its 3D pieces. It thrilled and inspired me to discover more about its symbolism!

I was excited to explore the symbology of the oranges, which represent golden coins because of their shape and colour. Naturally an orange tree is the perfect symbol for prosperity! There were golden coin 3D paper images at the foot of the bowl. The blue bowl in which the tree was planted, seemed like a heavenly blue to me, and at the roots of the tree in the bowl, there were jewels on the soil. Red is the colour of good luck, and little red rectangles were envelopes in which you could put paper money.

In my first image, I painted a Prosperity Tree in watercolour and included a golden dragon on the blue bowl. It symbolizes that the tree of prosperity is rooted in Heaven, as you can see there are stars on the trunk of the tree. Differently than the image of the original ornamental tree, I substituted golden coins in the heavenly soil, instead of jewels, but still showing that the soil is loaded with riches. I loved the information about the Chinese dragon being a beneficent character and chose to include him as a spiritual being. Of course, the cloud holding up the bowl and its tree further symbolizes the aspect of heaven from which all bounty springs.

After painting this image, I thought about how I could bring it into three dimensions, and remembered that I had bought an electrical ornamental tree whose flowers light up. I decided to collect an assortment of Chinese New Year's ornaments and decorate this tree as a Prosperity Tree!

I was able to find lots of Chinese decorations, red and gold items. One decoration was in card, of different dragons. You can see in the bottom image, how I cut out various parts of the card dragons to create a more three dimensional card dragon to fit around my blue bowl. I specifically wanted this dragon because of its golden colour and the reflective metallic finishes on the print of the card. I also bought deep blue velvet to use as the "soil" at the bottom of the tree.

I found an "Easter" basket at the Dollar store and weighted it with gravel, after spray painting it deep blue. I folded blue velvet as the "soil" and placed chocolate foil covered coins in this "soil" around the tree base. I can still access the off/on button at its base. I bought a gift bag that had gold foil discs printed on it, and cut them out to hang like coins on the tree. I also bought battery run light strings to layer on the tree for more sparkle! I "gold leafed" the trunk. Some of the decorations include beads like diamonds.I sprinkled gold foil stars on the velvet "soil", too.

Here it is on display in my living room's Prosperity Corner! I had the classic Buddha and then found the wonderful dragon statue and the Laughing Buddha. I think they make a perfect trio under my Prosperity Tree!