Today I tried out a new (to me) tree technique. Ingredients were: weed armatures, home made ground foam, latex caulk, and some tools. Here is how I did it:
This is the weed I started with. I picked about 25 of them in a road ditch last fall. I don’t know what they are but they dry out to a very stiff and brittle state.
After they are trimmed and cleaned up they look like this.
Here are a couple of shots of the foam I ground in a blender and colored with acrylic paint. I find this tree making works better if the foam is not ground too fine.
What I did was smear some acrylic caulk on the end of the branch, then take a couple of larger hunks of foam and press them together over the caulk so they stick to each other and the branch. After the tree is done I give it a good dose of hairspray and maybe a little more foam for good measure. Then it is planting time!
What I like about it is it is really quick. I can make a tree in less than 10 minutes with this method. What do you think?
Let me start by saying that I have ZERO experiance with this. Its certainly better than what I will probably do in my first try, but I believe that you may have trimmed to much off the original weed. More branches equals more foliage. I would try to fill out the tree more by leaving the original weed in tact and adding the leafs on to it that way.
I’ll differ from the previous poster and say that the armatures are actually too big…and sparse. You need something smaller with more branches, and then the ‘foliage’ will not look so clumplike.
I am expermenting with the same methods. I use weeds with many more arms. I use the smallest and put several together with florists tape. I use hair spray as a fixant and I like fine foam with several coats. I high light with a thin mist of light green or yellow. I also spray paint or brush paint the stems as a preserative. Others suggest soaking in glycerine before you add foam or paint. I havn’t tried that and probably won’t.
