Making Trees ~ In a frugal sense!

Looks good! another technique you can try that's real easy is take some hemp fiber rope (just don't try and smoke it.)   cut it into 1" to 2" strands, and pull it apart into individual fibers.

   Next, take some small gauge wire, cut it into 8" to 12" lenghts, bend it in half, clamp the two open ends of the wire into a vise. Place the hemp rope fibers in between the two wire halves, chuck the other end of the wire in an electric drill, and give it a whirl. (Sort of like how bottle brushes are made.)

   Un-chuck the wire from the drill and remove the other end of the wire from the vise, take a pair of scissors and trim the loose strands, spray paint it green and continue as you did in your last step by spraying it with hairspray and rolling it in the blended turf. They make great conifer trees and cost about $.03 a piece....chuck

SilverSpike wrote:

Started making some trees yesterday and got some assistance from my little buddy Ben!

SS:

Interesting.  While I'm sure the bare spots could have been covered with more adhesive and foam, or by using a stickier adhesive than hair spray, I want to point out that the whitish bare polyfill looks very much like 1:1 caterpillar tents.

What do you use for your armatures?

Anyone

I posted a question earlyer on making birch trees hopefully to get some new ideas on for foliage.Any help will be appreciated.

Yankee Flyer 

For that particular tree we used a portion of dried flower known as Candy Tuft Natural color. I bought 7 different dried flower bouquets at Michael's Crafts store and use these as my armatures.

Some of the other dried flowers that I use are Caspia Basil in two different colors, forest green and basil green, Mini gyp (also known as Baby's Breath) in a white and forest green color, and Tassel in natural color.

I have not purchased from them but the Flower Depot online has great images of various dried flowers, their URL is http://www.flowerdepotstore.com/flowers.html

Yankee, I have not made birch trees, as they are not in abundance in our area, but I do remember reading somewhere how to make them. I will search and report back soon.

Cheers,

Ryan

I make my trees from a plant called "Forget-Me-Knots"....In the late fall after the plant turns to seed and the plant looks tree like. I cut to different hights and layout by size. I use cheap hair spay on the tops and sprinkle a green ground foam mix on. You can build thicker trees  ("building on")  by adding more branches. Just take smaller ones, use a pin poke a hole into a bigger trunk & add white glue. Also I like to plant them in odd numbers ( 1-3-5-7-ect) seems to look more natural.

Spike

Thanks

That is a great site. I did check out Micheals but maybe I was in the wrong department.

Here is to blue skys and a warm.

 Tomkat

Now we are getting some where! those are some great trees.

 Before I get anyone mad a me. Yankee Flyer has nothing to do with the north and south. That was the make of my airplane and my CB handle. And I left the sun off my last message.

Blue skys warm sun

TomCat, thanks for the "Forget-Me-Knots" tip. Going to have to add some to my spring flower planting mix this year.

Yankee, see your other post too on trees! I found some birch references for you and posted them there.

For a traveling layout, I've seen good looking and very sturdy tree armatures made from stranded copper wire.  Keep the trunk end wound, then unwind the top into a crown of branches using multiple wire strands to go from thicker to thinner limbs.  To hold it all together, flood the wire with solder, then paint.  It is rugged as heck, yet still flexible so it'll take a beating and yet be easily restored to it's proper shape.

I'm going to see about making some of them myself...

Lee