Fickle Food

I may have mentioned I like to collect junk–old, broken, useless things (at least in most people’s minds) that no one else wants. I find many of my goodies at yard sales and I’ve even been known to dumpster dive on occasion. In fact, some of my favorite, most treasured possessions began as found objects.

Last summer we found this old wooden lamp base in the free pile at a yard sale. It was missing the decorative iron “arm” which would have held the bulb socket and shade, but I figured even if I never found a piece to go on top, we’d come up with something to do with it.

I was complaining to my husband this week that our bedroom seemed a bit under-decorated compared to the rest of the house which was fully dressed out in Christmas regalia. He looked around at the high-Victorian wallpaper, my troupe of antique porcelain dolls, the heavily carved (and incredibly hard to dust) wooden furniture, the complicated fringed drapery and crystal babbles dripping like diamond pendants from every possible surface, and rolled his eyes. I get that a lot.

What the room needed was a Victorian feather tree, unfortunately, they’re sooooo expensive and difficult to find–you’re not likely to find one in even the finest dumpsters. So I decided I would try and make one, or at least a facsimile of an antique tree…

This is a fast easy project. Once I got all the materials together it only took a couple of hours. Here are the items I used to make this tree:

An electric drill, the bit should be an itty bitty bit bigger than your wire.
A glue gun. And glue sticks–yeah, I know I don’t have to tell you that, but the next person reading this might be an idiot.
Garland: I bought two packages that were fifty feet each, but used less than half of the second. I chose white, but green or silver/gold–or any other color would work too. How about a pink tree?
Spray adhesive: you can do this project without it, but it’s easier with.
Very thin wire, beading wire works great.
Scissors, wire snips, newspapers, Band-Aids, (Due to past incidents involving power tools, I now include bandages in all my projects)
Aluminum wire: this is sold in hardware stores, it’s thicker than coat hanger wire but much easier to bend. I bought thirty feet, and used maybe twenty-five.
And of course, you will need a wooden lamp base.

I began by cleaning, de-wiring and de-spidering (involuntary shudder) the lamp base. Mental note: I will no longer store anything in the crawl space of our basement.
Once it was cleaned up the lamp base looked pretty nice, so I left it alone, but you could paint or gild your base, if you so desired.

Next I measured off and marked where the holes for the wires or “limbs” would be. I began at the top of the post and made marks every four inches. Then I turned the post sideways and made a mark about four inches down from the first top mark and again continued in this fashion all the way down the post. Mine is a simple, almost stylized tree, however, you could make more rows if you wanted a bushier tree.
(See picture if you are having difficulty following my description)

Next I drilled the holes all the way through the post and out the other side. You may need to enlarge the the exit wound a bit.
After all the holes were drilled, I began cutting my wires for limbs. I cut two pieces about 30″. Then cut the next two limbs a little shorter and so on until I had enough for all the branches. After all the wire was cut I began poking them through the holes, beginning with the longest pieces at the bottom. Be very careful not to poke out your eyeballs as you are doing this. Once the wires were through, I used a dab of hot glue to hold them in place. Then I wrapped a bit of garland around the wire to hide the glue and secured it with a small piece of bead wire.

Once all the limbs are in place, stand back at evaluate your tree, if the limbs look too long, do a bit of pruning with your wire snips. When you are happy with the shape it is time to “foliate” your tree. Place the newspaper over the base of your tree and your floor. Then spray a bit of glue onto the top limb. Begin wrapping the garland around the wire. When you are satisfied your limb has the proper amount of “fuzziness”, secure the garland with bead wire. Wrap all the wires in the same manner.

TA-DA! Your tree is done!

Well almost done, now comes the fun part, decorating it! I made the star at the top, It’s just a piece of foam cut into a star shade, with lots of glitter and tinsel.

My dolls like their new tree too!