I wanted to find a cool Halloween tree this year, one for a gift, and one for myself. I belong to a couple of Halloween "building" lists, and one does gift exchanges this time of year. Entrants can make or buy gifts that correlate with their recipient's tastes, but the price must stay under $20. That in itself can be a challenge sometimes.
My recipient likes vintage Halloween styles, so I thought that a tabletop tree and small vintage-looking ornaments would be a good gift. I had already decided to make the ornaments, but planned on buying the tree. However, I wasn't able to find one locally that wasn't glittery, 2-dimensional, or have a face on it.
I wanted a twisted paper look that could be repositioned to her liking. I also wanted it in black. Sleek, darkest black, if at all possible.
I had at my disposal some wire dry cleaning hangers, plastic food wrap, wire snips, pliers, rubber gloves, black craft paint, a little water, a wide mixing receptacle, small spatula, and a whole lot of newspapers and white school glue.
Safety glasses are also a good idea, in case of small bits of airborne metal!
A few been-there-done-that caveats:
1) I think that waxed paper would have worked better than plastic food wrap, but I didn't have any when I began the project.
2) It might also have helped to have thinner wire hangers; they would have required less work to cut.
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I cut the straight portion of the hangers at different lengths, to make different sized branches. I only used five because this was an experiment, and because I only had thick hangers which are more difficult to cut. The shortest one was cut just above the straight line, so that I had enough of the curved portion to curl up the cut ends for safety. The longer ones used more of the curved portions, but had to be straightened with pliers before curling the cut ends.
Definitely be careful with those cut ends; you don't want to be responsible for injuries!
If you have trouble cutting the wire, simply hold it in place with the snips, and bend the wire back and forth at the cutting point. It doesn't provide a clean break and it takes a minute, but it works.
I didn't want to use a flour paste for the tree, so I opted for the glue and water recipe. I didn't use exact amounts of water, but one bottle of white school glue with the water and paint provided enough paste for three branches. I used a "pinch bowl" from Dollar Tree for adding the water, filled it 3/4 full, and used about 1/2 of that for the first batch.
I had a small bottle of craft paint, and poured about 10 small-ish dollops into the mix. It wasn't as dark as I would have liked it, so I painted the branches with a brush and straight paint once the glue mixture had dried. I don't know that adding more paint to the mixture would have really made it dark enough without painting them afterwards anyway--since the glue is white, and there's so much more of it than anything else. My opinion is that it might result in waste of paint, to just keep adding it to the mixture.
I used an old ice cream bucket for mixing, because of the width and depth--and because it had a snug lid so I could go back and use the mixture again later. The mixture doesn't cover the entirety of it, but it helps to have more room for dipping the papers. That's why I chose a spatula to mix it with, so I could scrape the bits around that strayed from the main mixture.
Lay out extra papers or something to cover your workspace with--this is a very messy project! You will want to lay sheets of waxed paper on top of this, long enough to put your wet branches on as you work. If you'll need to move them before they're dried, I recommend a single piece of waxed paper for each branch.
I folded a single sheet of newspaper into a rough triangle by meeting two ends, and wrapped the wires, crunching and lightly twisting for texture as I wrapped. Then I removed the wire, and dipped the crunched paper into the mixture, being careful to squeeze out extra mixture into the bucket as I went.
Re-wrap your painty-gluey paper around the wire using the crunch and twist method above. I tore the paper a bit in doing this, so be careful. It adds a little character to the branches if it tears, but I don't recommend tearing it a lot purposely. You will have extra paper at the bottom to curl up for the base--but make sure that you wrap the top end of the wire fairly near to a corner of the triangle. That will be the tip of your branch.
Finished product photo coming as soon as it's 100% dry!
