Tree-Paper-Tree

There must be, I feel, some awesome philosophical point being demonstrated by this tree. Just think, it started life as a tree, became paper, and is now, once again, a tree – this time with added words. I actually made this last year, to prove a different sort of point. On telling my art class we would be making papier-mâché bowls, I was informed that ‘papier-mâché’s boring’. This tree was my response. I have since had a lot of questions about its construction, so this post endeavours to illustrate just how it was made.

When making papier-mâché you generally either want a mould (like the balloons and bowls you may recall using to shape bowls/lightshades), or some kind of supporting internal structure. This internal structure depend on what you’re trying to make – how difficult the shape is, how strong you want the finished product to be and, of course, what you happen to have available. For making container lids, I generally make a simple cardboard lid to cover, as this allows me to precisely control the dimensions to fit the container base. 

My tree needed something both a little stronger and more flexible. I fell back on an old standard of papier-mâché, and indeed paper crafts in general – the toilet roll (can also be substituted for the kitchen roll, if a longer, thinner roll is desired). There are three toilet rolls in the trunk of my tree – the bottom one cut and splayed like root buttresses, which helps balance the sculpture, and the top one cut into three and twisted into the start of branches. 

With the primary structure in place, I then added some curled cardboard to extend the tree branches, including a small cylinder glued to the trunk. Once these had dried the first layer of papier-mâché went on, including twists of paper to enlarge the root buttresses. 

At the same time, I was making the smaller leaves and branches. These took ages to make (most of a month for the whole project, working on it for awhile most evenings). First I painted newspaper with a wash of acrylic paint, then cut each leaf pair out by hand (okay, I’d cut through a folded pile, so it wasn’t quite every leaf individually). Each leaf pair was then glued to the top of a torn strip of newspaper which I twisted to form the small branches. Each branch then got twisted together ... you get the idea. 

Finally, all the small branch groups were attached to the trunk by papier-mâché. After another couple of coats of paper and paste over the trunk and base, the whole thing was left to dry thoroughly, then given a couple of coats of varnish. 

It now earns its keep on market days, as a lovely stand for my origami crane earrings.