During the first training day with Linette, there was a gentleman there who made Bonsai trees. They looked spectacular! So nothing being off limits, I decided to have a go. I soon realised that I needed a lot more wire strands than I had cut and of course, I had to use a variety of colours (Magpie again!). I had a couple of goes with the following results. Here’s the first one. I also had fun with the roots!

Here we have the second one, using other colours of wire. I still need a lot more strands, will my hands have the strength to twist them? I’ll need to have a go. Just one more tree to show you under this heading, although I did make it with beads.

Just one more tree to show you under this heading, although I did make it with beads, and mounted it onto a lovely piece of wood

I still have lots of ideas for different kinds of trees, so which one next? Butterfly tree, it fills the void for different colours, that’s a surprise, right? Also, I’ve been learning about the process of metamorphosis, from the caterpillar to the butterfly. Yes, I’m going to do a teachy bit!

The caterpillar, when it enters the cocoon stage has to completely die to everything it was, in order to be transformed into a beautiful butterfly. The caterpillar literally becomes a protein soup that contains only a few stem cells that will grow to become the butterfly. Even in the final stages the butterfly has to break open the cocoon to emerge, nothing and no-one can intervene at this moment or the butterfly might not have the strength to emerge from the darkness to the light. Sounds a lot like life, doesn’t it?

Anyway, teachy bit over!

So I used the original tree pattern of thick garden wires, wrapped with the thinner wire, then splitting the thick wires to form branches and making smaller ones as I went. At the end of the small branches I attached a 100 wooden butterfly buttons, guess what? They were all brightly coloured, there’s a surprise!

The roots were woven with coloured wires, making a nice flat base. (This one is not for sale, however the second one is! See my shop).

Here is my second attempt at a Butterfly Tree. I used the same techniques as for my first one, but finished it with a different coloured base.

One day as I was browsing through some photos of real trees, I came upon this picture of a tree.

It really spoke to my heart, why? To me, it represented life coming from death. So I decided to have a go at my interpretation of the tree. Much harder than I thought.

Firstly, I had to tackle how to make an open tree trunk with a through and through. I ended up wiring individual pieces of heavy duty wire together in a circular fashion, allowing me to create a holes front and back. I then wrapped the tree and started to paint it. However, my lack of painting skills meant that it came out a horrible brown camouflaged look. I really didn’t like it. So I started again with the paint.

Colours, I love colours, REALLY! My husband Malcolm calls me a magpie! So I threw away the idea of having tree like colours and went for something bright. Job done! I’ll show you the pictures in a moment.

Next I thought of ways in which I could get water running through the tree. I thought of building a reservoir and using a small pump. I discarded this as I realised the water would eventually ruin the tree, unless it was fully contained. So instead I used silver and blue wire and wove the blue wire between the silver strands, to represent a meandering river that twisted and turned. I wanted to highlight the river area and so I added a set of warm LED lights.

Finally, more colour, red and green moss, just to be different, lol!

So here are the pictures of the finished tree. Much happier with the outcome this time! Try, try, and try again!

For my next venture, I wanted to try to make a wrapped tree and paint it, following the style that my friend Linette (Penney Lane Studios) had introduced to me.

I must admit this tree took a long time, longer than I had thought, but I pushed through. I also included the idea of having a cabochon in the open void in the trunk.

I found a lovely pick cabochon, that shows a vein like pattern when the light shines through it.

Oh! I did say I liked colours, didn’t I? So I painted the leaves in multiple colours of metallic paint. The main trunk I used metallic silver and then to pull the leaves and roots together I dabbed the trunk with the different metallic paints that I used on the individual leaves.

Here are the roots and a picture of the finished tree. It hangs in pride of place in our home office. (Sorry not for sale!)

My husband Malcolm had bought me a lovely glass heart pendant. Unfortunately, the top ring broke off and I was no longer able to wear it. I really loved the glass heart and so I held onto it for a good number of years.

Just after I had learnt to make the wire trees, I came up with the idea to take the tree making further. So instead of making a straight trunk, I split it into two, leaving a heart shape void in the middle of the trunk so that I could wrap and insert my broken heart into the middle. I highlighted the heart with gold wire, so that it would stand out.

My Broken Heart in the middle of the trunk.

The branches I filled with all sorts of beads, trinkets and even satin flowers.

The roots I made multi-coloured. (Did I say I like colours?).

So here is my Broken Heart (nope it’s not for sale, it’s just ‘cause I like showing off!!)

So here we are, we’re in lockdown. Although it doesn’t disturb us too much as we work from home and our work is mostly over the internet anyway! However, it did increase the amount of time we had at home and all our travelling stopped. Yeehah, more time to put my head into trees.

I had ideas for butterfly trees, more willow trees, framed trees, and wicker heart trees, all sorts, but which ones first? I made a plan of the ones I wanted to make first and so I tried another willow tree. This time in pink. Every time we went out to a shop, I’d have my eyes peeled to see what I could use to enhance the trees. (Glad B&M stayed open, during the lockdown). I found some round mirrors, which you can see here. They reflect the beauty of the tree below and I tried a different root system. I was getting bolder, just a wee (that means little for you non scots!) bit at a time.

So this one is called Willow Tree – Pink with mirror and is on sale in the shop.

I had one more idea for a willow tree. I had seen beautiful silver lined multi-coloured (Did I say I like colours?) seed beads and I had also seen the LED lights that Linette had given us at the workshop. So the combination began, following the patterns of the ones I had already made. Lo and behold I had a third willow tree with lights, WooHoo!

Again this is for sale in my shop, called Willow Tree – Mixed crystal with lights.

This was the end of my willow trees for the moment, time to try something different! But what? Catch up next time!

Now I had the bug. I had all these ideas floating around my head as to what I could make first and I wanted to get going, you know itchy feet!

Anyway, just a week later my husband took me to Hobbycraft and to The Range, I was in heaven, almost! Getting to spend money and Malcolm helping me to spend it, what more could you want?

Well the week after that we went on holiday to England for a couple of weeks. Did I remember to take anything with me, DOH, not me? However, there was a Hobbycraft not too far away, so I bought some wire and some beads and started to make a Willow Tree, The majority of the beads were orange and complimentary colours, (did I say I like colours?).

The wire I used was craft wire and was very difficult to manoeuvre with bare hands, so I had to ask Malcolm to lend a little of his strength, Grrrrr, He man! Anyway as usual I digress!

Between us we managed to get the wire twisted and then I sat down at every spare moment and beaded the wires with the seed beads, some of them were 4mm, while some were on 2mm, so it took a long time to fill all the branches. Before the week was up I had to sweep the floor to collect all the beads I’d dropped, never realised they could be so small.

Well, shutdown for COVID was being mentioned and we came home early, so that we didn’t get trapped in England, nothing against England, but I’d rather be trapped at home, in Scotland with my own things around me!

I wondered if I would get my Willow tree finished before we left. I did and it travelled safely to Scotland with pride of place on the back seat of the car!

A view from the side and top. I experimented with the root systems, to see how I could change them and make them differently and yet with the same stability. It worked much to my surprise.

This only spurred me on to try new styles and different methods of making trees.

This is my willow tree – orange and is for sale in the shop.

After many years being told I was not artistic. My husband and I attended a workshop that our friend Linette Penney Gainham of Penney Lane Studios, was running on wire trees. There I made my very first wire tree. (For the whole story see About page).

We started by taking 5, 7, 9 pieces of thick garden wire approximately 2mm thick and about 12-14 inches long, Man! They were hard to cut. We then started to wrap these together with mossing wire about 0.5mm thick. We wrapped them from about 2inches up, (for all you younger folks 5cm!). You’ll need to forgive me as I often switch from old to new measurements all the time (brought up at that in between stage, you know what I mean? LOL!).

Anyway, we wrapped the middle portion and then started to open up the branches at different places and continued to wrap the branches all the way out and back again. Wrap, wrap wrap! And you got it. Wrap, wrap, wrap! We even got a few giggles in while we were working, even better!

So now that we had a trunk and branches, we added on some smaller branches by using the thin wire and attached them to the main branches.

We splayed out the parts at the bottom to form the roots, as you’ll be able to see from the photos I curled mine round at the end which gave the tree stability. All of course under the watchful eyes of Linette. And here it is a work in progress. I know it looks minimalistic, but considering it’s just wire and I’m not artistic, (I’d get slapped for saying that, LOL!). It does have the look of a tree.

So onto the good part, adding lots of coloured (I love colour!) wire and various trinkets to the tree. Linette had a huge range, so we all got to rummage through.

It was amazing watching everyone else’s trees taking shape, the ideas and contrasts were amazing. Some had brought some favourite bits and bobs to add to their trees, along with wool, fabric, etc.

Anyway, back to the point, (rabbit trails happen all the time, so please be aware not to fall down the holes!). I added different colours of thicker wire up the trunk and made each branch a different colour.

I found some little bells that sounded really great, some cogs, metal leaves, love charms, keys and to top it all off I found a wooden butterfly (that to me speaks of transformation and new beginnings, which this day was for me!).

Finally, Linette pulled out some rice lights and as I wound them up the tree and switched them on, the little tree took on a whole new look. Tahdah!!!!

I was very proud of my little tree! (You’d never have guessed would you?). You can just see the butterfly lying across the top.

It took the whole day and lots of winding of wire, I had sore wrists by the end of the day, but I had caught the bug, finally something I could put my imagination to!

The only other thing I did was to paint the butterfly, nothing can be plain around me, for long!

This happened in February 2020, just a month before the first COVID lockdown. Perfect timing or what?