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"Homemade Palm Trees" Topic


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3,408 hits since 26 Jun 2012
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Mapleleaf26 Jun 2012 9:13 p.m. PST

Great idea dnd presented well.


An alternative for smaller scale fronds are green garbage bag ties. They already have the wire Just trim off "paper" to expose wire then use your techniques to shape,attach and paint the paper covered ends. The only difference will be smaller trees.

dampfpanzerwagon Fezian27 Jun 2012 2:16 a.m. PST

Great tutorial.

Tony

dBerczerk27 Jun 2012 5:20 a.m. PST

Very inspirational! A neat addition to the terrain "bag-of-tricks."

Volunteer Fezian28 Jun 2012 7:38 a.m. PST

Great idea! They look fantastic. I am definitely going to try this.

richarDISNEY12 Jul 2012 3:13 p.m. PST

Nice tutorial!
beer

ketaylor14 Jul 2012 10:37 p.m. PST

Thanks for the tutorial . As I have tried this , And it works out great .

Lorimer22 Jul 2012 7:15 p.m. PST

Hello all,

You can also do this with silk leaves from a craft store and long green wire (also from craft store. Works like a dream and is a good color.

Best,
Richard

Timmo uk04 Aug 2012 6:55 a.m. PST

I liked your tutorial and particularly the use of the pipe cleaner.

I've tried using silk leaves and florists wire as Lorimer suggests, cutting into the leaves using a fine pointed pair of sharp scissors designed for those who tie fishing flies. I think it's a great method and one worth considering as it saves some painting.

Dervel Fezian04 Aug 2012 7:12 a.m. PST

Well, I have not tried the floral leaves… I will have to give it a try.

Glad to see that this has generated some good idea exchanges :)

Gabriel Landowski Fezian06 Aug 2012 10:32 a.m. PST

Nice article!

I have a 50 pack of razor blades, which means you can make a razor "rake" by placing thin pieces of cardboard (whatever thickness you want for your frond strips) in between and then wrap some masking tape around the stack in order to handle. Offset the blades so you can still place the tips along the center of the fond, but allows you to cut at a 30o angle uniformly down the leaf. Takes a little time, but once you start shredding the silk leaves from the craft store in less than 5 seconds per leaf you'll be glad you did it.

You can mount the shredded leaf on wire as in the example, but stick them into the tops of cone cones which have been chewed down by squirrels – take a look around the base of large pine trees and I'm sure you'll find some. They make great palm tree stalks.

I mounted mine on fender washers and let the sand/PVA glue mix break up the perfect circle of the base.

Good times.

dglennjr06 Aug 2012 11:56 a.m. PST

Gabriel,

Great idea about the stack fo razor blades. I've got some other uses for that as well. Thanks.

David G.

WarrenB19 Aug 2012 6:57 a.m. PST

I… was greatly inspired by this one from the U.K.

As far away as that, eh? grin

Very nice article, though. Very effective results. I'll certainly keep it in mind.

Fireymonkeyboy13 Oct 2012 7:05 a.m. PST

Terrific idea. Going to pass this on to some club guys doing Vietnam.

combatpainter Fezian24 Oct 2012 4:38 a.m. PST

Great tutorial! Very nice work. I have used this method and it produces a nice result.

Granted, it is rather labor intensive. I now go with the birthday cake palm trees. They are about 30 cents each and you need not but base them and spray a bit of dullcoat to have them ready.

Nickpes20 Nov 2012 6:49 a.m. PST

Great tutorial, thank you … I will try it soon :)

Inner Sanctum10 Dec 2012 5:27 a.m. PST

Fantastic idea – I swapped feathers for the shrubbery, made some great prehistoric plants. Woth trying the metallic pipe cleaners, they make a nice "prickly" stem.

Madboris30 Nov 2013 9:12 a.m. PST

Great tutorial with very impressive results.

The only detail I would add for greater verisimilitude would be some way of adding the dead black leaves that droop down from under the crown canopy where it grows out of the trunk.

CIA Games01 Aug 2014 5:59 p.m. PST

Wow! How simple! Here I was going to the Aquarium store to buy some inferior looking plastic trees and I stumble upon this just in time. Excellent article and a very simple and effective way to create said trees. Thanks!

tommy9802 Sep 2014 5:36 p.m. PST

Im currently building a small 4x3 Caribbean themed board to use for a pirates vs royal navy skirmish game me and a few friends came up with i made some palm trees by twisting wire and wrapping it in string to make the trunk and using thin pieces of cloth for the leaves they look okay but i think I'll make some using this method to give some variety to the table if anyone has any suggestions on any other terrain for this type of thing it would be great to hear them. Thanks

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