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Wire Tree (12 August 2009)

So I followed an urge yesterday and starting playing around with the florists' wire I had picked up from Craftwise in town the day before. I spent a number of hours trying things out (including soldering - more practice needed there, methinks), and ended up with this.

I have been wanting to make a tree for some time now, although my initial thought was to make it with polymer clay. I cut equal lengths of the wire, 16 in all, and then used jewellers' pliers to curl each end. I then bound all the wires together using a high gauge black wire, and arranged the branches to create an abstract tree shape. I twisted two or three of the roots together to create a stand. Whilst the tree looked good just like that, I felt it needed something more, and after a false start with some dyed moss (the kind you use for model railway landscapes), I ended up making leaves out of beads.
I threaded two different shades of green seed beads on very fine gauge gold wire. Then I wound the 'stem' of each leaf onto the curled tip of each branch, putting two leaves on a few of them. There are 20 leaves in total. I then added three 'apples' by using red wooden beads. It was quite fiddly to do, and next time Iwill experiment with attaching the leaves and fruits before binding the wires together.
The tree itself stands approximately 12cms tall, and about 10cm wide.

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