Tree making 101: I start with Super Trees from Scenery Express. What you get in the "Value Cases" is a big "bush" of natural plant material that, when separated out, looks amazingly like scale trees. They claim it's from Denmark - what do I know about plants? I've read some people say it's a plant called Sedum, and you can grow your own in the back yard. Well, that's not happening. Anyway, they look good, except they tend to have a natural curve I need to get rid of.
I work in the kitchen for the first steps - another advantage of being single... here's a batch separated from the bush into individual trees - all shapes and sizes.
Then they go into a huge pot of water to boil for a minimum of 20 minutes. It smells kind of like kale when it's cooking...
Then outside, I've rigged up a clothesline under the deck to hang them upside down, with extra clothespins for weight. The boiling and hanging straightens the trees out.
When dry, I spray paint the lower stems with cheap light grey primer.
When the paint is dry, I dip the lower painted part into a mixture of alcohol and black India ink. I think the combination of the grey primer and the ink dip gives the "trunks" the right grey color, highlighted in a darker tone.
Here they're laid out for the ink to dry.
Next, holding the trunk in a gloved hand to mask it, I spray on 3M Super 77 hi-tack adhesive. It is ready to work with in seconds.
Now it gets fun. I use Noch Professional Leaf Flake in a variety of shades for the foliage. Some flake is poured into the Turbo Tree canister. Actually, I modified mine by transferring all the guts into a little larger container of Utz Pretzels. The Tubo Tree is a little pricey, and it looked like something I could probably make myself - but as someone in the manufacturing field, I appreciate the cost of innovation and engineering, so I bought one. It worked great, except I found a little larger container worked better, so now I have about a 2-year supply of pretzels.
I tried to get a video of this thing in action, but failed miserably... but it works really well, distributing the leaf flake evenly onto the tree sprayed with hi-tack. The trees are then placed upright into a scrap of foamboard with holes poked in it to allow the glue to dry.
Finally, I sprinkle on a random dusting of a fine highlight color - browns, yellows, reds - and give the trees a spray of cheap, unscented, super-duper hold hair spray to keep everything together.
Planting is easy into the foam scenery base - poke a hole with an awl, add a dab of hot glue, and plant. Smaller pieces of Super Tree material, with leaf flake added, are used as underbrush to fill in the gaps.
I keep count of the trees as I plant them - the current count is 132 trees!
