Our Tree Diorama

We were asked to make something for a festival of trees, we decided to make a small diorama of a wood.

We came up with some ideas, everyone wanted to do a tree, but also some animals that lived in and around the trees. We wondered what to use for a base. Luckily we found an offcut from a pine plank. This gave us a base to work on but also dictated the size too.

The trees were made from a hanging basket liner and a wooden skewer. We cut the liner into different sized circles and then glued them to the skewer.

We spray painted the trees black. This helped us make shadows as well as make them more rigid. Once the paint was dry we covered the trees in PVA and water with a drop of washing up liquid to help break up the surface tension. When they were soaked through we sprinkled on the dark green flock. When the trees were dry we sprayed them with hair spray to seal the flock on.

We then drew out our design on the board and built up the hills with offcuts of polystyrene. We covered everything in Sculptamould. We made a depression for the stream when it was still wet. We then painted the ground brown.

We decided where the trees were going to go and then made holes to take them. We then covered the ground with PVA glue and sprinkled on lots of different flock. We made sure we didn’t touch the stream as we wanted it to have water in. The stream had a darker colour painted on and then small stones and grit were glued on.

Mr. Renwick printed us animals and birds. Everyone painted something. The trees were glued into their holes and then the animals and birds were stuck onto the scene.

We then got Mr. Renwick to add the resin into the stream area.

Our final task was to add all the tufts to look more like long grass and reeds.