I stumbled across a wonderful tutorial by Connie Sauve on making realistic trees. (As of 2024, it seems her tutorial is no longer online.) She used a natural leaf material called candytuft.
I ordered candytuft in basil green from Scenery Solutions. I looked at the local floral shops, but the floral sprays they had were different and not really workable. I bought two bunches since I wasn’t sure how much I would need. I probably should have ordered more for this tall tree in the first place, and I did end up ordering three additional bunches. I will likely use three bunches overall, so I’ll have some leftover for next time and other projects.
Detail of the “leaves” shows the variegated color that works well for visual interest. (Unfortunately, as of 2024, candytuft is no longer readily available.)
Since I started with green, I had to paint only the stems. Quick and dirty, no fine detailing here. It transformed them immediately. I can certainly see why these are so popular in model railroading.
Since I changed the type of foliage, I ended up clipping a lot of the wire branches I added since the candy tuft flares out and works better with a shorter base branch. I bought clips at Michaels and used Aleene’s Quick Dry.
Adding the branches was actually less of a pain than one-at-a-time leaves with a quicker payoff.
I touched up the paint around the glued bits to blend in with the tree branch tips. Hooray! :D
Looks full until I turn it to the side.
Once the additional candytuft arrived, I was able to finish the tree and plant it.
I made one branch to fit over the roof, because who is going to climb a ladder to trim it?
After trying out this method of foliage, I will have a hard time going back to any other way.
