We’ve had a parade of visitors this summer, and as a result, the armatures for the thicket trees are nearing completion. After creating a number of trees with 26-gauge wire and strands of electrical chord, I went back to Michaels and found they also carry 32-gauge floral wire. This turned out to be just the right thickness for my needs.
When twisting the armature for a tree together, you don’t want the trunk to get thick too quickly. So, you need to think two steps ahead when adding branches. On the one hand, you need at least four or five twists to make a branch stable relative to the trunk. However, if those four or five twists take vertical space, then you might have to add another branch in that time; suddenly the trunk is three wires thick. A bundle of three 26-gauge wires is too thick to represent the svelte saplings in the thicket. But with 32-gauge wire, they look fine.
Away from the workbench, I have a little sandwich container that contains everything required, including some tape and a pen to label the armatures. Keeping track of the armatures turns out to be one of the hard parts of this exercise. Even with the labels, one compound tree, number 12, has eight sub-trees, and I’m still not sure I have them all properly sorted. The armatures stayed flat in the sandwich container, and I only realized they didn’t need to reside in there after I had made over thirty trees. Then I cut and labelled small squares of 12mm foam core to jab the trees into. These armatures are now ready to spread their branches.
Pembroke:87 