Palm Trees
Here is a cool way to make Palm Trees.
- Start with a carpet tube which are readily available from any carpet installer.
- Cut tube to desired height, say 6 feet.
- Place the tube in a large flower pot filled with plaster of paris or sacrete/ cement. Lean tube against a wall until set. You can put more than one tube in a pot.
- After the tube is set up in the pot, begin with strips of brown or tan burlap about 4-6 inches wide and as long as you can make them. unravel about an inch or so of one side of the burlap to make a long fringed pieces. Begin wrapping and gluing this around the trunk of the palm tree. fabric glue such as Aleene's glue works best for this.
- Then cut a swimming noodle float about 6 inches long. slice into it 1/2 way, the long ways, do this twice . interlock the two pieces and shove into the top end of the tube/ trunk. you may want to glue this in place, but I have found it generally stays put on its own.
- Then take those thin white dry cleaner hangers that are basically not good for clothes, and pull on the end. flatten out the hook. You now have a leaf shape form.
- Cut out a top and bottom green felt palm leaf a little larger than the hanger frame. glue the two sides together with the hanger in the center and the flattened hook sticking out the base/ poke the hanger into the foam swimming noodle in the center of the tube. you have the first leaf on your palm tree. do this as many times as you want for a full palm tree I use about 10 leaves. The leaves can be curved easily to give the proper frond graceful curve on the tree.
These trees will last for a very long time.