Learn the Art of Recycle: The making of the Wishing Tree

April 13, 2011~ This whole project got started when I made two doors. One was a Faerie door and one was a Troll door. I had left the first Troll door I ever made in a permanent art installation in the first shopfront that we had in Lancaster. This time I was going to build frames to mount to the walls because I thought it would be cool to have faerie and troll doors for sale that would open up and have Chelas art behind them.

Chelas took one look at them and said "Those will look great in the tree"
"What tree?" I asked.
"The tree you're going to build to put them in" she replied.
I explained to her my idea that they were just to mount to the wall and she batted her eyes at me and I melted into a puddle of goo and started building her a tree.
April 14~

I started with a recycled full size 4'x8' panel of half inch particleboard and an octagonal table which I dismantled and cut in uneven halfs. I arranged the halfs as the floors of the levels and drew out, in straight line cuts, the basic sketch of the tree. I used the scraps of the sides to build the basic structure of the tree.

There were lots of particular angle cuts here making sure each board fit snugly to the ones next to it.
April 28~This was a fun part, fitting some scrap wood to become the frame to the troll door. I hadn't yet figured out what I was going to do to the front and Chip and I were talking and he suggested that I carve it into stone. I couldn't resist and while Chelas was out and couldn't talk me out of it I took up the Dremmel and started carving away.

The tree is really starting to take form after three weeks. Chelas painted the stone facade and I installed small round picture frame windows in the sides and May 6th~ we moved it out of the workshop and mounted it in the hall outside our studio.

Of course we contemplated other ways to bark the tree but we decided that there really wasn't any way to get the look we wanted without the real thing.

So the intrepid Chelas and Nobody set out on one of the funnest parts of a really fun project, bark hunting!

This of course involves long walks in the woods and sometimes getting your shoes muddy.

I set some bark up next to it to see how it looks, and I like it!

May 7~ Another busy day. I build the upper entryway, install the Faerie door, and shingle the roof with some materials donated by Lancaster Creative Reuse our next door neighbors. The shingles are discarded sales samples of rubber flooring that were made from recycled tires. Third use recycling! Each shingle is individually nailed in with two nails.

May 8~ Chelas makes signs telling people what the project is about and I build and install the wish slot. (On the middle right behind the pink paper)

May 19~This first batch of bark I simply puzzled together the largest sturdiest pieces I could find and drilled countersink holes through them, screwing them to the frame with precisely the right length screws. This turned out to be not the best way to attach them. I was using up my supply of recycled screws too quickly. (more on this later) Trying to bark out herein the hall forty feet away from my workbench took a lot of extra time running back and forth for tools I realized I needed. I soon added a rounded top to the wish drop to make it look like a proper UFPS wish drop.

May 28~I installed a lighting system with Christmas lights by screwing almost all the way through the floors with a large bit and then finishing with a bit the same diameter as the bulb. I had some wiring issues and could not get all of the sections to light up and eventually replaced the white strand with a single orange strand that starts at the bottom and works its way up through each of the layers ending at the top. The single strand of lights allows even a standard household extension cord can be used to route power to the tree.

Chelas cut cloth wallpaper to cover the walls and then we decorated the interior (mostly Chelas) with lots of random faerie things.

Chelas installed a stone floor from broken bits of tile (she was a stone mason contractor for many years).

Chelas and I cut out flooring sections out of flooring samples (again from materials that had been donated to Lancaster Creative Reuse), and installed them on cork sheets (from an old military desk) as fully removable panels covering the lighting systems in the floor.

Chelas built a troll helmet out of a turtle shell and had me drill holes through it to attach the straps and spike and I burnt up two drill bits and I gained a new level of respect for turtles.

Bells to call the faeries were important. Chelas had me install a set of old porch chime bells that she had been saving. I used rebar tie-wire to construct a mobile and hung it in the area behind the faerie door with a pull cord of weed-eater string. Unfortunately I did not mount it securely and it fell after about a month.

The project slowed down for a while as lots of other things like scheduling Chelas face painting at birthday parties and working on the Rudbekia storyline took precedence for a while. I would get a day here and there to work on it and the bark slowly grew...very slowly!

I finally had some time to work on it in mid November. We moved the tree into the workshop and in three days with the tools pictured her I got more bark on than I had in the prior five months. I re-hung the bells and now they are quite secure.

Chip came by and installed the faerie fort, with rope ladder and the faux slate roof that he made from linoleum.

Chelas was also hard at work painting as fast as I could bark it.

The space between each piece of bark needed to be caulked and painted as well as labeling and instructions painted on everything.