Tuscan Lemon Tree

Here's my latest craft project. It's my idea of what a Tuscan Lemon Tree would be like.

First off, here's the various items I used to create this tree:


The sizes are dependent on what size bowl you are using for this project. I used a large ceramic bowl, two blocks of styrofoam, styrofoam cone, wooden dowel sharpened on both ends, artificial lemons cut in half, decorator moss, Spanish moss and deer moss, hot glue gun with LOTS of glue sticks, knife (actually ended up using an electric knife to cut styrofoam), black, brown, and green acrylic paint, small sponge paintbrush, and a small, very sharp scissors. Some of these items aren't shown in the above picture because I forgot, or I decided after I started creating to use them. That's what we call spontaneity! Next I put chunks of the styrofoam blocks to fit inside the bowl, and hot glued them into place. I then inserted the dowel into the blocks, then hot glued to secure. I wanted a tall tree so I hot glued the cone to a block of styrofoam, and shaved it into a cone shape to match the tall cone, hot glued those together, then placed onto the dowel. Again, added a bit of hot glue to hold in place.



With all the workings in place, here's what it looks like up to this point.



Now the fun begins, gluing on the lemon halves. I guarantee that they won't fit in nicely side by side. On occasion I would have to push down on their sides to squeeze them to be able to fit, but in the end you won't notice these little fudges. So just start gluing and placing, from the bottom up. I made sure that the bottom row of lemons hung lower than the styrofoam by about an inch. See the progress in the next picture.




Now that I've got all the lemons glued on, I painted the dowel with brown, black, and green acrylic paint to create a wood-like look. Now that that's done I'm ready to start filling in between the lemons with the Spanish moss (I chose a dark green colored moss). I took small bunches of the moss and placed a dab of hot glue on the end and pressed it into the spaces between the lemons. I should mention here that I have a lo/hi setting on my hot glue gun, and after a couple of owies, I changed the setting to lo, which worked fine for this project. The next picture gives you an idea of what I'm talking about.


The filling in with the moss was quite time consuming, so be patient. If you start feeling like you're overdoing it, walk away for awhile, and come back later to continue with a fresh perspective. When you've got everything filled in, come in with a small, very sharp scissors and start giving the moss a haircut, until you get it just how you want it. I then shoved some decorator moss into the base of the pot to fill it up, and on top of that I added deer moss to give a soft finished look. And now, the end result.....