There are over 60,000 species of trees in the world so if you’re making a model tree from scratch, you’ve certainly got a lot of choice for inspiration. Some model trees are true replicas of their full-size counterparts, whereas others are abstract, DIY, mini masterpieces.
As well as the variety of trees you could choose to make, there’s a multitude of materials to choose from as well. Model trees can be made from everything from paper to sponge to wire – they can be made from recycled materials or purpose bought materials.
With so many options to choose from, where do you start?
Firstly, it’s best to decide what scale you’re working too and how realistic you want your tree to be. This will depend on what you need your mini trees for. Common uses for miniature model trees include:
- model railways
- dioramas
- dollhouse or miniature gardens
- architect models
- school projects
- Christmas decorations
Below you can find out more about what size your trees should be, depending on what you’re using them for.
Making scale models of trees
The vast majority of tutorials for making miniature trees are for very small scale trees such as those used for wargaming dioramas or model railways. The same is true for trees you can buy, unless you visit a specialist shop such as The Model Tree Shop, you’re unlikely to find many miniature trees for sale that are outside of model railway and wargaming scales. Buying larger trees is very expensive, with trees costing as much as £18 each for a 15cm tree, which is still pretty small.
There seems to be a number of reasons why there’s not much information out there for making larger scale model trees:
- Making large scale trees is expensive (because they require a lot of materials and involve a lot of work!)
- They are too big for most layouts and uses (more on this below)
- They would be difficult to store and transport for non-permanent layouts
- There doesn’t seem to be much demand for them
- Making them would take a long time
I spoke to Neil, my model railway enthusiast father-in-law, about why there aren’t many larger scale trees and he had a very good point – model railways rarely feature large trees that are to scale as if they did, you wouldn’t be able to see the train going round!
Also, a realistic full scale tree canopy would obscure other details in the model railway and make accessing parts of the railway difficult. So for that reason, most model railways don’t feature full size trees and instead feature trees that are about 75% of the full scale size.
As trees are obviously a variety of sizes in real life, you can get away with not making them exactly to scale. But, if you put a 1:160 scale n-gauge model railway tree (a mature tree in this scale is approx 10cm tall) outside a 1:12 dollhouse it’s going to look like a small bush.
So while you can be flexible with scale to an extent, if you’re looking to make or buy larger trees for your layout or dollhouse project, choose trees which are naturally smaller in height. Again, this is a top tip from Neil, rather than trying to make a full-size mature oak tress to stand outside your 1:12 dollhouse, go for a tree that is naturally smaller in height.
His recommendations were (images clockwise from top left below):
- Magnolia trees
- Rowan trees
- Ornamental pear trees
- Ornamental cherry trees
Many of the above trees have wonderful blossom, so you could add colour and texture to your tree by options to make one in full blossom. You can make blossom using either paper or grated coloured sponge or polymer clay – more on this further down the page.
How to make 1:12 scale trees for dollhouse gardens and scenes
To make 1:12 scale model trees, you’ll need the following:
- A craft knife
- XPS modelling foam (this is often used to create dioramas bases and can be bought here)
- Hot glue or foam glue
- A wire brush
- Grout
- Spray paint or regular paint
The technique basically involves cutting two blocks of XPS modelling foam, glueing them together and using a knife and/or wire brush to carve and texture the foam so it looks like bark. You then fill in any gaps or seams with grout to make the tree trunk look more even and realistic.
In the video below, the crafter shows how you made a tree trunk for a 1:12 scale project, however, he doesn’t show how to make the top of the tree! Therefore the below technique is useful if you’re wanting to create a cool background for taking pictures of your 1:12 scale characters or dollhouse.
You could build up the branches of the tree using wire and epoxy putty such as Miliput and paint this so it’s a similar colour to the trunk. I did this myself and reveal the results in the post What Is Milliput And How To Use It With Miniature Modelling. To add blossom to the crown, you could use tissue paper flowers – you can find out more about making miniature flowers from paper (and other materials) in my blogpost How To Make Miniature Model Flowers From Felt, Paper And Polymer Clay.
For leaves you could try using modelling foliage such as teloxis bloom leaves from diorama specialists Diorama Presepe as the modeller does in the tutorial below (jump to 9:00 for the foliage part of the tutorial). This is for 1:24 scale oak tree but I bet you could apply the same approach for a bigger tree.
For a less fiddly approach, you could just spray the tree with adhesive and scatter scenic leaves over the tree, but it’s not going to look as realistic as doing the process above and it might look a bit bare – it will be much quicker though!
Another way to approach making trees for 1:12 scale models is to use artificial foliage used for flower arranging. Sprigs of plastic plants such as asparagus bush, parsley fern and lilac foam berry bush, all available from Hobbycraft, make excellent miniature trees and their size makes them suitable for 1:12 scale. Although this type of foliage is normally the correct colour, you can actually spray paint them with acrylic paint that’s been thinned with a thinner or rubbing alcohol to colour them the shade you want. Once the sprigs of leaves are ready, you can mount them on a wire armature.
I love this tutorial for making autumn trees for a Sylvanian Families layout, the modeller uses the technique above and the results are so cute.
Making model trees out of natural materials
This is a no brainer – there’s already lots of trees, weeds and shrubs out there so why not use cuttings, sticks or twigs from these to make your own miniature trees?
Making simple model trees from natural materials
If you want to make a model tree with a straight trunk and smooth bark then you can use dried flower stems or ornamental bamboo stems to create the trunk, or even small sticks. Top the natural trunks off with some modelling foam cut into the shape of a tree crown, paint it green and cover in scenic leaves, such as these from Rails of Sheffield. This is a quick and easy technique for making model trees on very small scale projects, or for making ornamental topiary trees on larger scale scenes. I made these topiary bushes in a similar way and they’re roughly 1:24 scale.
You can read the full tutorial for these in my blog post How To Make Miniature Model Bushes, Shrubs And Hedges.
Making realistic model trees from natural materials
This has to be the easiest way to make an ultra realistic model tree – just head to the park or your garden to find a small branch and use this as the structure of your tree. If you’re doing a winter scene then you won’t even need to add any foliage. But if you want some foliage, add poly fibre (you can buy this from model railway shops) or thin synthetic wool to the branches and top this off with coarse turf.
The tutorial below demonstrates how to make miniature trees from sticks, but there’s no reason why you can’t apply this technique to larger scale trees.
There’s a great tutorial here for how to make miniature trees from hydrangea blooms and the end result is so impressive.
The best plants to use to make miniature trees
You can make miniature trees from a whole range of plants, if you live in the northern hemisphere, you might have access to some of these plants that make great model trees.
- Queen of the Prairie makes great birch and poplar.
- Astilbe for pine trees.
- Spirea for pine trees – there’s a tutorial for how to do this here. If you’re in the UK, you could use buddleia as it looks very similar.
- Sedum grows in many areas of the Northern Hemisphere and makes great deciduous trees.
You can see the above plants in the image below, shown clockwise.
Other options for plants you can transform into miniature trees include the following:
- Heather makes great broadleaf trees when combined with sea moss, or you can skip the sea moss and use it as a pine tree. You can read more about making trees from heather in this tutorial and there’s also information on making conifers out of asparagus fern, which is originally from South Africa but can be bought from florists and nurseries in the UK. Asparagus fern leaves look similar to palm trees so you could experiment with making some tropical trees from this plant.
- Yarrow is another UK plant which makes great mini trees. It grows extensively along roadside verges where the ground is chalky. You can find out more about making a teeny tree out of yarrow with this detailed tutorial.
In the image below you can see how just by drying yarrow, it starts to resemble a miniature tree.
There are some general tips to follow when making a model tree out of natural materials so you get the best, longest lasting results.
- It’s best to harvest the plants or flowers in autumn, when they’re turned brown as they will be drier and easier to work with.
- Remove any leaves from the bottom of the stem to create a trunk. For example with spirea, you’ll want to remove the leaves from the stem and keep the flower, as this is what will become your tree crown.
- Soak the flowers or plants in a mixture of glycerol, alcohol and water to soften and preserve them. You’ll need to soak them for two days and then let them dry out completely (which will take a minimum or three days). You can either leave them on newspaper to dry or hang them upside down from string like a line of miniature tree washing!
- When they’re fully dry you can spray paint them as they are, or combine two to three stems together to make a fuller tree.
- If you want to add some more leaf detail, apply PVA glue to the top of the model trees, or use a spray adhesive, and dip the branches into course ground foam, scatter or scenic leaves.
- You can enhance the colour of the trunk with brown paint.
TOP TIP: Even if you don’t have a garden or live near a park, you can still use natural materials to make miniature trees. One crafter on this forum successfully made miniature trees out of grape stems!
Making model trees out of seafoam
Seafoam is a ground covering plant often used in rockeries and has a silver white foliage, which is what gives the plant its name. It’s used extensively in miniature modelling as cuttings from the plant look exactly like little trees and don’t require much (if any) amending to look realistic.
You can add details to the trunk and branches with spray paint and enhance the foliage with turf, flock, static grass and leaves.
The video below is a great starter tutorial if you’re a sea foam tree beginner. It includes how to straighten, paint and add a wide range of different foliage to sea foam trees.
Bottle brush trees made from sisal
Before writing this post, I’d never heard of bottle brush trees or sisal but apparently they’re all the rage in Christmas decor! As well as being handy for holiday decorations, they can also be used as a semi-natural tree for dioramas, dollhouses and model railways.
Just for clarification, bottle brush trees in ‘the wild’ are native to Australia and have the name because the flowers look like bottle brushes. Bottle brush trees for use in miniatures are so-called because they’re often made from bottle brushes or because the end result looks like a bottle brush, but they are used to represent conifers in model scenery.
Bottle brush trees have a very distinct shape that looks kind of like a child’s drawing of a Christmas tree. They are usually made from wire and sisal (a hard fibre extracted from the leaves of the sisal plant).
Below you can watch a tutorial for making bottle brush trees out of wire and sisal fibres.
As well as making them yourself, you can buy them ready made online from places like Amazon and then bleach them and dye them the colour you want. Unless you’re using them for decorations, it’s unlikely you’ll want to dye them as bottle brush trees are usually used to represent evergreen conifers in dioramas so the natural green colour is perfect. Word of warning, if you buy artificial bottle brush trees you won’t be able to bleach and dye them, if that’s what you want to do, as you can only dye the natural sisal bottle brush trees.
Neil, father-in-law and master of all model railway knowledge, recommends not using huge amounts of bottle brush trees in a scene, especially if they’re shop bought as they look very uniform so can look unrealistic. You can of course trim shop-bought bottle brush trees to look more individual, and spray paint them or add flock, curse foam or leaves so they’re more realistic looking.
TOP TIP: If you’re making miniature trees for a diorama scene or model railway, then placement is very important. Often just having one tree can look strange so arrange your mini trees in clumps and don’t worry about mixing shape and height as anything too uniform will look unrealistic.
Making model trees out of artificial materials
Model trees made from wire armature
The main method for making small model trees is to use thin wires to create the armature. It’s worth bearing in mind that the more lengths of wire you use, the more branches you’ll get and the thicker the trunk will be.
Once you have your lengths of wires, bend the wires in half and twist these round to make the trunk. You can then bend and loop the wires at the top, cutting the loops to make the branches. You can do the same with the wires at the bottom to make the roots.
To make the texture of the trunk, use a brush to coat the entire wire in latex rubber, such as Woodland Scenics Latex Rubber. When this is dry, user a brown primer to coat the tree – this will act as an undercoat for the tree. Next use acrylic paint to add detail to the trunk and branches.
To create the foliage, spray the crown with adhesive and then dip the tree into Woodland Scenics Course Foam. Repeat this step over and over until you’re happy with your result. Finish the tree off with scenic leaves – use spray adhesive on the crown and then sprinkle the leaves on top.
The excellent tutorial below will walk you through the above process step by step.
Using modelling clay to finish wire model trees
In the above tutorial, the modeller uses Woodland Scenics Latex Rubber to cover the wire but if you want an alternative to this, you could try Milliput. Milliput is a very hard-setting epoxy resin which acts like a putty. It’s an air dry epoxy that sets much harder than polymer clay and it sticks to many different materials, which is why it’s great for sculpting miniature trees!
You can buy a tube of Milliput here.
I had a go at making my own miniature tree with wire and Milliput and it was so much fun to make, even if the outcome was a little rustic! You can find out more how I did this in the blogpost What Is Milliput And How To Use It With Miniature Modelling: Beginner’s Guide.
Milliput is ideal for giving the trunk and branches a more uneven appearance and it can be used to disguise the wire at the end of the branches. Once the wire is covered you can then use acrylic paint to paint over the Milliput. If you don’t have any Milliput, then Green Stuff is a great alternative but not as cheap. (Again, thanks to father-in-law Neil for these tips!)
You can see how Milliput is used to cover wire armature in this tutorial below – skip to 12:30 to get to the Milliput part!
You can also use polymer clay to cover the wire armature and the whole model can be baked in the over, before painting and adding the leaves. You can use a needle tool and/or ball tool to add texture to the bark before baking.
One benefit of using polymer clay is that it comes in a huge range of colours so you can use a brown coloured clay to cover the wire and this can be your base coat for your tree. Once it’s baked and cured, you can paint polymer clay with chalk pastels or acrylic paint to get the finished look you want for the bark and branches.
You can also use polymer clay to create leaves for model trees. All you need to do is bake a block of green polymer clay, then once it’s cooled, use a grater to grate the entire block into leaf shapes. They may need some colour adding to make them look more realistic, but if you’re creating very uniform topiary trees, then using grated polymer clay is a great option.
I’ve also seen the grating technique used to create blossom too – you can either use pink polymer clay, or use a pink sponge like this crafter has done.
Using paper to make miniature model trees
I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the ‘natural or ‘artificial’ section as essentially, it’s making trees from trees! Making paper trees is a great project to do with kids as it doesn’t involve fiddling with pokey wire or delicate natural materials. These trees don’t look very realistic and probably wouldn’t look too great on a model railway, but they’d make a great project for a dollhouse garden or indoor fairy garden.
There are hundreds of different tutorials available for making paper trees, so I’ve selected the best ones I could fid below. For most of these you’ll need paper, scissors, strong glue (ideally a glue gun) and something for the trunk (a stick, toothpick, or kebab stick).
In the tutorial below the technique is described as ‘easy’ and while that’s true, it’s definitely time consuming and a bit fiddly. However, I’ve included it here as making these trees involves very few materials and the end result looks awesome.
In this tutorial below, you can learn how to make miniature Christmas trees using crepe paper, scissors, pliers, florist wire and white glue. They use brown crepe paper to cover the wire stem to turn it into a trunk which is a great tip for covering armature. I also very much enjoyed the Christmas carol soundtrack!
The tutorial below combines brown paper (for the trunk) with a green sponge (for the foliage) to create miniature trees for next to nothing. They’re not super realistic, but they look pretty good and would be a great project to try with kids.
Finally, the tree below is just so adorable and so easy to make with kids that I wanted to include it here.
How do you attach a model tree to a base?
When you’re making your mini tree, you can hold it in your hand, use a pair of pliers to grip it or poke the bottom through some cardboard or foam to keep it in place. But once you’ve finished your mini masterpiece, how do you attach it to a base? There are a few options that work for all types of model trees, whether they’re DIY or shop bought:
- Use a small drill to make a hole in the bottom of the tree trunk, the hole needs to be small enough to insert a pin or fine piece of wire. Drill a small hole into the baseboard and to make sure your tree is going to be super secure, add a little bit of superglue into the base board hole before inserting the pin. You can then pop your tree onto the pin and it will be held in place. This is a particularly good option for attaching trees to bases made from plywood.
2. You can use super glue or hot glue to attach a model tree to a baseboard, just make sure you disguise the glue with ground cover once your tree is in place.
3. If you have a foam baseboard you could use an awl (a small pointed tool used for making holes) to create a hole and then pop the tree trunk in, securing it with a little glue.
Top tips on making model trees from scratch
Here are some bonus tips for perfecting the art of making and arranging model trees:
- Look at real trees – this should be your starting point for making any kind of tree, even if it’s an abstract model. Studying real trees will give you the absolute best information on scale, size, shape, colour and everything else.
- Decide what season your trees are in – this won’t matter so much if you’re just doing one tree, but if you’re making a whole forest of trees, make sure they all reflect the same season.
- Most woodland thins towards the edges – if you’re making a full forest then bear this in mind and make some smaller trees and shrubs to position at the edge of your forest.
- Don’t forget ground cover – trees rarely just grow from bare earth, there’s usually twigs, leaves, grass and other foliage at the base. To add the ground cover for a tree base or larger woodland area, spray the area around the base of the trees with 50/50 diluted glue and water and scatter terrain flocks to make the ground look more realistic.
I am going to attempt to make my own wire armature tree at some point over the next couple of weeks so I’ll upload the results soon, in the mean time – happy tree making!