For the “Natural” round of the So You Think You’re Crafty competition, we had to make something that was at least 50% natural. We started out with an idea of making giant snowflakes out of sticks, but that ended up a horrible mess and I almost poked an eye out. So, we sat there with a pile of nicely gathered sticks around us thinking of what else we could do with them. We finally settled on making a miniature wood scene to go on a mantel or in the middle of your dining room table. It was super easy to do — let me show you!
First, cut a piece of Styrofoam to size. In this case, I measured the top of my mantel and made the Styrofoam a couple of inches smaller than that all around. You can make your piece any size you want, but I think a finished size that is long and narrow would look best. Now poke your twigs into the Styrofoam. We snipped the end parts off of larger branches to get twigs with lots of small branches, which ended up looking like mini trees.Â
Once you have your forest filled with trees, you will need to do the next two steps at the same time. First, spray everything in sections with white spray paint. As soon as you finish spraying a small section, sprinkle coarse Kosher salt
Once you have finished sprinkling the trees, you’ll want to build up the snow on teh base. Use some spray adhesive
Once the whole thing is dry, it is time to make the adorable little red birds. Pinch off a little bit of Sculpey III red polymer clay
You could also nestle some tea lights within your forest to give it a nice glow at night.
9 comments so far:
I liked this one!! – great job – Mandy
Thanks, Mandy! Your wreath was just too awesome!
This would be a perfect backdrop for a Dickens Village! So cute.
Salt, very tricky.
And I figured out the voting secret… the others say “I” in their posts, you say “we”.
Carol, what a good idea. I actually have a little village I put out and it never occurred to me to do this! Jan, we do use “we” and “we” hadn’t even noticed until now! Thanks for voting!
Oh cool! I did vote for yours…thanks for the instructions.
I liked yours best, and it is something I will more likely actually do. These pictures show the snow and trees better. It’s more impressive that I thought! Thanks for the how-to.
You know what i love the most about this project? I can be used from the beginning of November to the end of February – may be even into early march depending on where you live!
Beautiful! And a perfect hideout for a collection of snowmen who can stick around till march too!
so impressive!