I was at Liquidation World today hunting for a bargain when I happened upon a section full of Christmas stuff. I found a plastic wreath which had been broken that was like $2.00. I brought it home and chopped it up for trees! So far I have made 98 nice-looking trees of various shapes and sizes and I expect to have 400+ by the time I run out of material. That's half a cent per tree!
Soon I shall have an entire table top coniferous forest! hahaha!
Anyway, here is what you need:
Instructions
Twist the main wire until a strip comes loose, do this many times until you have a large pile of strips. Cut the strips to the height of the tree you desire (use a mini for scale). Trim the top to give a tapered effect, and chop all the bristles off the bottom section to give it a trunk. Ruffle the bristles a bit to get them evenly spaced. And you're done!
Once you get going you can crank out 2-3 a minute!
(In the UK caulk is more commonly known as frame sealant or flexible filler. It comes in tubes for use in filler guns. A few different colors are available including dark brown - Gary).
Now you have a VERY sticky silicone covered tree. use some clips or clamps to hold the tree as the silicone dries. (2-3 hours)
Now you have some bare trees. since the caulk is flexible, you can bend the wire frame into a lifelike pose. add foliage as needed.
Now you can have trees that can survive being flattened. take flat tree, re bend as needed. Can't do that with plastic or wood trees.
You take a green dish scrubber pad cut it in circles, rip it into as many circles as possible( using the rounded part pull the top and bottom apart ), Then run a hooked tool over it until the greenish wire stands up. Then poke a hole through the center of the circle with a skewer, shove the circle down over it ( you may wish to trim the other circles to make an even better triangular shape) after you've placed as many circles going from biggest to smallest (bottom to top) put a triangular tip of scrubber on top and glue the top piece and the bottom circle. You may spray with hair spray if they begin to fall apart (I've never had that problem). Then you may paint or texture it if you wish to acquire the desired look. Paint stem brown. if you want you can model on roots at the bottom.
Once your done these look almost as good as a store bought and at half the price!
I like this tree making tip from Phil. I have heard of pipe cleaner trees before but have never made any. I intend to try this out soon though!
Phil says that for simple, easy trees you need:
Method
By adding more pipe cleaners you can change the height and number of branches/roots on the trees.
Costs Pipe cleaners cost about 50p per bag of twenty or so. I usually get about 4 trees per packet.
Postscript from Gary: I was so keen to try this technique that I nipped out in my lunch break to buy some pipe cleaners. I bought a pack of 100 for 1.50 pounds (tip: the tobacco shops were cheaper than the craft shops!). After experimenting I found that 5 pipe cleaners gave the effect I wanted (I expect it will vary from brand to brand). I got a more realistic effect if I twisted the pipe cleaners into branches near the top. So, I started by twisting all 5 together to make a trunk. Then, as I neared the top, I twisted three of the five together, and the remaining two together, to make a main division in the tree. Then a little further along its length I twisted two of the three strand branch together making two further branches - one of two and the other of one strand. I did the same with the roots to get a more branching, gnarled effect.
When I had four done (about 5 minutes later!) I sprayed them with Citadel black spray. I found that it was hard to get the spray to penetrate into the fluffy folds of the trunk, and I might try some other way of getting them black, like dipping in thinned black paint.
Anyway, the trees look great and I will be able to make 20 from my 1.50 pack! Here comes a jungle...
I found a great way to make a cool alien-like forest composed of long neon glowing crystal shafts. First get a sheet of 1 mm thick neon pink (or any other color) acrylic sheet and on a band saw slide it into strips 5 to 6 inches long and 2 mm wide. Cut each strip into different lengths and glue onto a rocky base in pairs of two or three (can you have 3 in a pair? - Gary). In large groups this makes a neat crystal forest suitable for any gaming set.
This is a tip for making trees (and it's one that most people probably already know): Construct an armature (skeleton) for the tree using metal wire... use the thickest wire you can bend without too much difficulty (the thicker the wire, the stronger the finished tree will be). The armature should consist of the trunk and the main branches. Each main branch should split at least once. Add new branches by twisting a new piece of wire around the main trunk. Just keep twisting more sections of wire around the existing ones, until the basic shape of the tree is set.
Cover the armature with sheets of aluminum foil. Compress and mold the aluminum foil like you were sculpting clay. Just keep pressing the foil down, and adding more layers, in order to bulk up the tree's branches.
When you're finished adding the foil, cover the entire tree in strips of masking tape. Paint the masking tape with a solution of white glue thinned down with water, and let it dry (this keep the masking tape from peeling off). Add pieces of scrub sponge, dried lichen, etc. to form clumps of foliage, or drooping strands of spanish moss, depending on what kind of tree you're making.
This is an easy method and I created about 40 trees over the period of a 3 days. First take 2 pieces of wire double the length of the tree you want tomake. Take some garden twine and cut loads of 4 cm lengths. Place these on one of the pieces of wire and spread out evenly. Apply PVA glue and place other piece of wire on top. (This bit is a bit fiddly and takes some practice.) Once the glue is dry, place one end of the tree in a vice and using a hand drill at the other end turn the tree until it halves in size. Using your hand ruffle up the tree until it looks tree like. Spray tree black. Once this is dry spray tree with varnish and role in scatter material (flock) The above process will need to be done a couple of times. Quick cheap trees to make large woods.
Hedges can be used as cover and concealment, or to break up LOS
Materials Green scratch pads - the kind used for pots and pans. Pack of three for $1(US) Balsa Wood Glue - PVA or Super Material for a base
1. The Hedges Take the scratch pads and cut them in half lengthwise. This will give you two pieces 6 in that are higher than man-sized figure. Give them a bushy look by pulling on the sides. Dry brush them with light greens and browns.
2. The Base Make the base as described above. If you put a 45 degree angle on each end, you can make corners when placing them down.
3. The Fence (optional) Cut balsa wood strips to make a wooden fence, like you see in the country. I either paint it white or just dip it in a can of stain (quick and easy).
4. Putting it together Once everything is dry, glue the hedge down the middle of your base, then glue the fence to both the hedge and the base.
That's it for now, feel free to edit as you please. If you want some more ideas, let me know and I'll send them to you.
In the United States, it's closing in on the fall months quickly. Good terrain builders should be heading for their local pumpkin patch. The place that sells pumpkins for Halloween and raises them for pie ingredients and whatnot. They will have countless pumpkin stems just laying about their fields. My local field lets me walk around after they have harvested their pumpkins just picking up various pumpkin stems and vines in their fields. They don't charge me anything at all. Why pumpkin stems? They make awesome trunks for trees! Just glue your flock and tree clumps to the top and stain the stem with watered down ink. If you want to get fancy, you can poke twisted wires into the top of the stem for branches. Once you add a base to the bottom of it... you have the perfect miniature tree. The vines work great as brush, various scenery detail, etc. You can hang them from trees, use them as branches in the trees, or what I'm about to do this year is build a Wood Elf Chariot from them. Just a bit of a stain from watered down ink makes them look very realistic.
1. find some brushes with relatively long bristles (2") and some lengths of wire have to be quite long. A vice, some green flock, and an electric drill (hand drill is OK but electric is better).
2. fold one of your lengths of wire in half and place the bent over part in the vice. You should now see what looks like two pieces of wire coming out of your vice. Cut the bristles off the brush and put them inside the pieces of wire, be careful they don't fall out make sure you leave some space for the tree trunk.
3. Then place the two ends of wire in your drill and spin baby, spin so the brush bristles spray out in a spiral.
4. Take the wire out of the drill and the vice. Then paint with glue! Note: the further inside the bristles you coat the better the effect.
5. Sprinkle the tree with flock of the color that you wish.
6. These parts are optional, for the base of the tree you can use polystyrene, or wood but by far the best way is melted down lead or any other "easy melt" metal. Melt down the metal in a spoon the pour onto a suitable surface let it cool.
7. drill a hole through the middle big enough for the trunk of your tree and stick in the tree and paint the base or flock it. Not only does this base look good, but it weights down the tree so a careless cat doesn't knock it over or baby brother/sister so easily!
I made some wonderful trees by using that foam foliage stuff that comes in one large mass and is torn off to create bushes. I suppose steel wool or mattress foam could work as well, but I haven't tried them. I start by finding small twigs in the backyard and cutting them into 1" long sections to make the tree trunks. I coat two thirds of the twig with tacky glue (or other white glue). Then I simply tear off sections of foam about an inch in diameter and impale them on the twigs, leaving part of the twig exposed to make the trunk. It usually takes two or three foam sections to cover the glue-coated part of the twig, resembling a snowman-on-a-stick in construction. The top of the tree is made by gluing a small piece of foam to the end of the twig. The finished tree can then be glued to whatever base or scenery is desired. I made forty or fifty trees in only a few hours, using only one package of foam foliage. My trees are only two inches high to keep in Battletech / micro-armour scale but larger or smaller trees can be made just as easily. Another technique is to glue smaller chunks of foam to the side of the twig, but these trees are not as strong as those made by impaling and may lose foam over time.
Construct an armature (skeleton) for the tree using metal wire... use the thickest wire you can bend without too much difficulty (the thicker the wire, the stronger the finished tree will be). The armature should consist of the trunk and the main branches. Each main branch should split at least once. Add new branches by twisting a new piece of wire around the main trunk. just keep twisting more sections of wire around the existing ones, until the basic shape of the tree is set.
Cover the armature with sheets of aluminum foil. Compress and mold the aluminum foil like you were sculpting clay. Just keep pressing the foil down, and adding more layers, in order to bulk up the tree's branches.
When you're finished adding the foil, cover the entire tree in strips of masking tape. Paint the masking tape with a solution of white glue thinned down with water, and let it dry (this keep the masking tape from peeling off). Add pieces of scrub sponge, dried lichen, etc. to form clumps of foliage, or drooping strands of spanish moss, depending on what kind of tree you're making.