Building a miniature tree house

Building a Miniature Tree House

The Parrot that started the ball rolling

This project all started with a Macaw parrot. I was flicking through my Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine (issue 296 January 2019) and I saw a tutorial for a parrot, it looked sooo realistic. I thought to myself "I'd love to have a go at that". Little did I know how it was going to fire my imagination!

The finished parrot

It was a really fiddly thing to make, indeed the magazine states it as a 'skilled' project. Undeterred I set to with my polymer clay, feathers and twig. I really enjoyed the project and was immensely pleased with the results. Now I had my own little parrot... and he just had to have somewhere to live. My imagination ran riot and the idea of a tree house developed.

Research

I don't know a thing about building a tree house!

First thing I did was Googled tree house images. After scrolling for what seemed like hours I found a photo from Pirates of the Caribbean, perfect inspiration. Then I looked at how to build a tree house. I often look at life size techniques to give me a clue of how to proceed, so I headed to YouTube to watch videos on building a tree house. There are some really awesome tree houses out there, modern engineered with everything you could want, but it wasn't the look I was after. Then I stumbled upon 'Brave Wilderness Life'. This was what I was looking for, a more wild, back to nature look.

Building the tree

Tedious branch painting

I started off with tin foil and wire (quite thick wire, it's got to hold a fair bit of weight), held together with masking tape. I found an old chopping board to mount it on and I drilled holes to glue the wire into. Then came Paper mache 'clay'. This is made using cheep toilet paper, shredded with a paper shredder, soaked in water, blended in an old blender, I squeezed as much water out as I could then added PVA glue. That dealt with the trunk, roots and main branches. The smaller branches I made with florists wire and attached them to the bigger branches. I disguised the joins with light modelling paste. Then painted it all with acrylic paints. Painting the smaller branches was sooooo tedious and there were so many of them! I couldn't wait to get started on the tree house itself, but you can't have a tree house without a tree!

A firm foundation

Adding the paper mache

Nearly finished

Building the House

The exciting bit

At last the tree was done, now I could get down to the nitty gritty. The first stage is to build a platform. I really didn't watch the videos close enough, if I had, this stage would have been a whole lot easier. Oh well, you live and learn. As it was, starting off the platform was really tricky, and wobbly, but as I attached more twigs it became a bit more stable. Next, I built a framework for the walls. Now my ADHD started to get the better of me.

Heidi keeping a close eye on progress

Starting the walls

Project on hold

Taking a break

Getting ready for a fair

I'd been doing really well up to this point but I felt I needed a break from it. I'm looking at doing a fair with dollysdaydreams so I've started making some stock for my stall. I will finish the tree house and hopefully it'll be hell of a crowd puller on my stall.

An abacus for my stall

To see what I'm upto now goto my Facebook page or my Instagram

Thanks for reading x