This is what I know:

I have to make 3 trees for a Midsummer Night's Dream school production. We will make use of one wooden pillar we have and a wooden construction and cover these with chicken wire. Then we will use paper mache strips to cover the chicken wire. Afterwards, we will paint them with dark brown and black water colours or spray paint them.

This is what I would like to know:

Some books say that paper mache mixed with cloth will be stronger and it has to be cooked. Could anyone tell me if it is ok, if I boil the wallpaper paste till it's warm and then use canvas cloth strips and newspaper strips to cover the chicken wire? Can I leave out the boiling procedure?

If I want to add branches to the construction, is there a safe and secure way of doing that?

Does anyone have any simpler ways of making stage trees?

Thanks very much!

Thanks for the information. I guess that the trees won't need to stand much weight like furniture so it won't be necessary to go through the baking process.

I found out that I can use white glue and mix it with warm/hot water to do the paper mache.

As for the branches, could their withering be avoided if I dried/lay them out in the sun for a while and painted them?

 G?donya Spectrum for picking up my obvious ?blue? - in forgetting to mention the fire risk! Which [could be a whole topic on it?s own!} As I believe not enough attention is paid to applying fire retardants to sets & materials used on stage. Especial in schools when they use all the right materials to attract fire, such as cardboard, paper, tat & other volatile combustibles on sets,  most amateur theatre groups & schools are reluctant to afford or understand the risks involved - until they have a fire - then they run around like a headless chooks,   trying to find & polish up their Fireman?s helmet before they can do anything  &/or having to  read the instructions on the extinguisher before getting it to work.
There again the education policy here is not to have fire extinguisher in schools, as they don?t want teachers to be firefighters! - possibly for the reasons I have mentioned above - Nah! it must be for some other reason?
Unfortunately here we have eventually extinguished the Fireman?s position backstage all together, unlike Britain & the US. For better & short sighted manpower reasons, in that he was regarded as being highly paid bludger,  they can also save the cost of supplying  a helmet, sand bucket & an axe.  But that?s another story!

Chookas Spectrum
 

http://www.abookshelf.org/blog_comments/orbweaver/archives/single%20tree%20nice%20shot%20smaller%20image.jpg - http://www.abookshelf.org/blog_comments/orbweaver/archives/s ingle%20tree%20nice%20shot%20smaller%20image.jpg

Having recently made some rather fantastic trees in much the same way.  We found that the paper does not stick well to the chicken wire.  Soak thin fabric bed sheeting, unsized muslin... cheap cheap cheap in a creamy mixture of white glue and water.  Wring it out a bit and slap it around the wire.  Leave a little give for a barky look. 

I think I mentioned somewhere else that trees really are not brown if you look closely at them.  A nice gray and green combo is quite good.  Especially for Midsummer Nights Dream.   Ours even had a bit of blue and black mixed in.  I hope these links work http://www.abookshelf.org/blog_comments/orbweaver/archives/Stephanie%20tree%20smaller.jpg - http://www.abookshelf.org/blog_comments/orbweaver/archives/S tephanie%20tree%20smaller.jpg

I have gone back to using newspapers and the result is great. As long as we use strips of newspaper and have the tree lying down, the process was done in fair time. We finished the newspaper layers with paper mache pulp and it looks quite good with irregular surface.

Could someone give me some more detail on the type of colours and procedure to use for painting a paper mache tree? Thanks!

 Start with your base colours brown or grey, then texture by brushing in green or reds. Outline lightly with black & Highlight with yellow & white.
What I can remember from my younger days in the Pohmy woods. They were drab & moss covered on the northern side of most heavily wooded areas - not that you need to orientate by the greenest side of the trees or get out your compass to find north! But you will find moss tends to grow more frequent on the sheltered side of the trunk - so pick a side & nominate that as north!

Besides all that! - just use whatever paint colours you have got on hand & mix & match to achieve dimension - the palette is yours!
Lighting has possibly more to do with achieving the desired effect with use of Gobo?s & split/gels.
Chookas Eagle

I saw some lovely trees in a production of The Wizard of Oz (the enchanted apple trees).  The base of the trunk was a very large, plastic field tile large enough for a person to stand inside, but this would vary according to the requirements. In this case, arm holes were cut, too.  Next, thick carpet padding (the type that is made of bits of foam rubber laminated together) was stapled to the outside -- this was done not smoothly, but so that the surface was irregular, with a rather vertical stratification. Then it was painted with tree trunk colors like brown, grey, black, etc. 

The top of the tree in this case was made of a sheet of luan with typical treetop shape, and hole for the face. We later borrowed the trees for a melodrama -- they can be seen at this website.    http://www.iowariverplayers.org/orphangirl.html - http://www.iowariverplayers.org/orphangirl.html   We put little birds and squirrels in the face holes.

We made a life-sized tree in school to hang "giving leaves" from so parents could pick a request to fill for the classrooms. We started with a 3X3' 3/4" plywood base on sliders.  The 12" diameter 5' trunk was formed with chicken wire, stuffed firmly with newspaper.  4 main branches were 3" sections 3' long, wired in, another smaller set of chicken wire (1 foot) thinner branches wired to the ends of those, and from each thinner branch 2 wire branches were taped in using electrical tape, then another set of smallest branches at the ends of each of these. To cover, we used plaster-soaked strips of sheets wrapped vertically and horizontally for strength.  The branches were thickened appropriately and all jointings were "lashed" with the plaster soaked strips. A skim coat of plaster was applied to the entire tree and texturized, painted dark gray, and we had planned on spray painting tan and black onto that surface. Fanstastic!  Until it cracked. Does anyone know of a tough coating we could apply to the surface that would eliminate the problem of cracking? This is heartbreaking!

Puzzled in NJ

I tried using plaster and I found that it cracked, I had wanted to try using it for the donkey mask but it seemed not a very usable material because of this feature.

To make the tree trunk irregular bark we used pulverized toilet paper in white glue. Really gooey stuff like clay. Students experimented with it and found that by mixing in more shredded toilet paper the 'paper mache clay' was harder. So you could actually throw on the harder mixture to create an irregular surface. We used wooden chopsticks to 'throw' the paper mache clay onto the surface. It was a bit difficult to paint because of the irregular surface but the effect was great.

I don't know how you can save the plaster surface. But I think plaster is just a material that does crack, so perhaps instead of trying to save it, you might try covering it with paper mache clay.

I will try to attach a picture to show you the final effect.

Eagle,

Thanks for the reply. It never occurred to me to try white glue and toilet paper. I have been looking at fiber glass for the at-risk areas, but the resurfacing sounds good. If you hear of anything else, please let me know. This is a large project and we must save it!

I've had great success useing spray on foam insulation. Th etype that comes in a can and grows. I've used a plywood base or even foam insulation sheets to creat the basic shape and then ues the canned foam to create the outer texture. Looks like bark, after you get the technique for allyingit, or work as a team. One person applies and the other shapes, you need to be quick it sets up in minutes.

Multitech.

Wasn't able to attach a picture but you can still see the bark of a tree we made at http://www.mss.edu.hk/2003-04/MidSummer04/midsummer_page/ind ex.htm