There are a lot of easy good looking tree. I just did a workshop on the subject.
Summary
Aggro introduced furnace filter on a stick. Great Christmas tree. There are many threads on this Once you get the furnace filters and the skewers, it is easy.
There are many weeds that make great trees when combined with micro fiber and either WS ground foam or Noch leaf material.
For large pine, Caspia in a stick is still the best. I will say more if you email me. There are a lot of good threads on this. A little searching and practice some, you can get a great variety of trees. You do not need to be an artist.
My pics in my signiture will show a little of what I have done. Search Aggro for his tutorial.
These are just clumps of store bought lichen glued onto painted BBQ skewers and toothpicks. Spray the lichen with cheap hairspray, sprinkle on fine-medium ground foam and seal with another coat of hairspray. You can make a whole forest for about $10.
These are a bit more complicated, but still cheap and home made. I'm going to post a "how to" on these in the General section this weekend.
This is goldenrod sprayed green with fine ground foam sprinkled on. I posted a how-to last weekend titled "fast,cheap and easy trees":
10 Minutes for 20 trees. Less than $.10/tree
Terry
Terry in NW Wisconsin
Queenbogey715 is my Youtube channel
I prefer to use stacked layers of furnace filter circles, onto which I apply circles of Elmer's Glue. I then sprinkle on ground up Busch Foliage Clumps, green florist's foam, or spray painted ground up Kittly Litter. I push sharpened half wooden BB skewers, (that have been sharpened on both ends and stained), into scrap Styrofoam (for support during tree construction). If the foliage is still too sparse, I spray the trees with adhesive spray and sprinkle on varied colored green (or Fall colored) ground foam. I have completed about 400 trees by this method, fairly cheaply. The background trees in the picture are mounted on moveable ovals of ceiling tiles, that have tapered edges and are stained. For dead tree, I use reindeer moss from LHS As to how to Post pictures: Download digital pictures onto an album in Photobucket. Below each image will be four options. Click on the bottom one, called IMG. Momentarily, the word," Copied" will appear. This means that your image has been placed in the computer Clipboard. Next, go to the desired Thread to which you wish to add a Reply,(or Post your own thread) You can type in the text that you wish to apply to your pictrue image. Click on ctrl V and the lengthy code for your stored image will appear. Click on Post, and your text and picture will be located at the end of the Thread. You can always Edit the text and rePost. Bob
The
I made these conifer trees based on an article in MR July, 2007. He used cloth floral wire, baling twine(old style, not synthetic) spray adhesive, flat black paint, Woodland Scenics conifer turf, a variable speed drill, scissors, and a small vice(I used a small locking pliers). He folded the wire in half,(leave about a quarter inch longer on end). Clamp 2 ends in vice, squeeze and leave a loop at the end. Cut twine into short lengths. example: quarter, three quarter, inch and a half. Slide shortest length toward vise. separate and space about an inch. Slide next longest, and so on till you think you have enough to make the length you want. Make it longer than you want, it will shorten up. Put a cup hook in drill, insert in loop, slowly spin till there is a uniform twist. Cut off loop, trim fibers in a roughly conical random shape, and thin. Paint whole tree flat black. When dry, spray with adhesive, sprinkle turf, and I hang them on a make shift washline with clothe pins. Then as a final touch, I spray with cheap hair spray and sprinkle lightly with fine WS grass or weeds to simulate new growth on ends of branches. I usually make about 15 at time (number of wires in package). Hang up to dry, plant trees on layout. Odd groups seem to look better than singles. I also vary the colors with WS med green turf, or just use fine med grass, weeds.
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WOW Gramps, great trees!!!
You've convinced me to give it a shot.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
I saw that article and even pulled that issue from the pile to keep on hand, got all the supplies just haven't have the brass ones to try it yet. But after seeing yours that might be a weekend project. Niccccccccccccccccccce!!!
Hello everyone: AltoonRailroader, since I live in Pa. and am modeling Pa., I wanted my trees to look more like the trees I see here. The trees in that article looked more like western trees. I did, howerver try using my fingers to apply the foam to the branches. What a mess! I only tried it on one tree, it wound up as a backround tree. That's when I decided to just sprinkle the foam on. As a side benefit, it also speeded up the process. I think everyone has a little trepidation at trying something new and unfamiliar. I was half scared to death to start on scenery. My LHS guy gave me some good advice. He told me to just jump in. So I did. My first two attempts at scenery(rocks) wound up getting buried under my third try. My scenery methods make it fairly easy to make changes and improvements. After a few failures, I started getting the hang of it. In a very short time, I found scenery became more and more fun. I, who thought I didn't have an artistic bone in my body, started to make scenery that looked fairly realistic. I just planted 15 more of my conifers last nite. I have a few more spots to do, but my scenery is pretty much done. Oh, btw, the wires I use are available at AC Moore. They come in packs of about 15. Also different ga. I think I got 22 ga. for my last batch. Here's another photo of these trees.