Recycled material for making tiny mini trees

Hello dear readers,

Today I'm going to show you, with photos, how I make tiny trees for nutshell scenes.


These are dried out pieces of grape stems.

I glued on green pieces of foam and this is the result.  It is also possible to
create bonsai trees with this method.

For dyeing the foam I made a mixture of 2/3 green acrylic paint and 1/3 water in a
small container and pushed inside two small chunks of foam. The foam was kept
soaking for an hour or two and been turned around several times.  I used a bamboo
skewer instead of my fingers, for taking it out to dry on some newspapers.
When dry I cut very tiny pieces to make the leaves.  I love the results with the shades
of green.

Used this small container to dye two pieces of this foam.

                                                                                                                            

You can cut the foam into very small pieces before and the green will coat the pieces
overall and evenly.  I wanted the effect of shades.

These were cut again to make even smaller pieces.

Now every gnome has a home as well as a tree.  Both trees stand, temporarily
on Plasteline. The tree on the left is with bought railway foam. The tree on the right has
my recycled foam. Which do you like more?

I wish you a lovely weekend and blessings.