Article content:
miniature tree bonsai - creation of skilled hands gardeners decades devoting maintaining their ideal shape. Creating bonsai from beads requires equally painstaking work, but the effect of such interior decoration is no less!
Being quite small, real bonsai copies a tree or a whole part of the forest in nature. At the same time, maple, ficus, pine or sakura remain living plants that require constant attention and care. A tree woven from beads day after day remains invariably beautiful, striking the play of light on tiny glass beads.
What do you need for bonsai from beads?
Having chosen a tree to your liking, having patience and everything you need for work, you can weave a bonsai of beads with your own hands. Although this type of hobby cannot be called simple, with a detailed scheme and manual, even with little experience, you can cope with the work and decorate the house with an original thing.
To work you need to stock up:
- beads of different shades;
- fine stringing wire;
- thick wire in isolation for the frame of large branches and the trunk;
- strong thread or special ribbon for floristics, which will braid the frame;
- alabaster or gypsum mixture for casting a support and fixing the bonsai stem of beads;
- acrylic paint;
- suitable pot;
- all sorts of decorative elements that will give the decoration a naturalistic look.
A cellophane film will be required as an auxiliary material, and a universal instant glue will help fix the décor.
Tools include wire clippers, a brush and gloves to protect your hands while working with plaster. An important help for the master is the scheme of weaving bonsai from beads.
Weaving bonsai branches from beads
The handmade bonsai frame consists of a wire tightly wrapped with thread or tape. The tree is mounted on a heavy stand made of plaster.
Of the glass beads, only the thinnest parts are woven - leaves, as well as inflorescences, if you have to make flowering bonsai from beads.
The choice of the type of wood depends on the bead palette:
- For pine, you will need different shades of green.
- Maple foliage plays with red, orange and yellow colors.
- Pink hues dominate in the crown of cherry blossoms.
- On chestnuts, besides lush greenery, white-pink brushes should bloom from beads.
- Birch branches are fresh light greens and golden brown earrings.
Each of the bonsai type of leaves has its own bead weaving scheme, but the approach to the assembly of branches and the entire tree is common.
Novice masters the easiest way to use the looped method of creating branches, quite suitable for simulating a fluffy crown. Designed for those who first started assembling bonsai from beads, a master class will help master the basic techniques and master the general technique:
- 8 beads are threaded onto a 45-centimeter piece of thin wire or fishing line.
- By moving them to the center, the beads on both sides of the beads are fixed in the form of a loop.
- The process is then repeated several times, and a small wire loop is made from each string of beads.
- For each twig, from 6 to 10 loops are made, after which the remaining at the edges of the wire line and shorten to 10 centimeters.
- The ends are connected and gently twisted so that at the top there is a fluffy cap of beaded loops.
Depending on the tree bonsai selected for bonsai, you will need to make from 50 to 200 small twigs. Of them, twisting the wire parts with each other, create larger branches, shoots and twigs.
Collecting branches, you need to remember that each of them has a top. Therefore, the work begins with the twisting of three small blanks. Then other fragments are added to them.
The twisted wire frames with bead bunches at the tops are not very similar to real branches, so they are tightly wrapped with a strong thread or floral tape, which will additionally fasten the design and smooth the relief. In parallel, the branches are given the desired shape, bends are made, "beaded leaves" are being smoothed out. Work is repeated on all branches.
Assembling and Installing a Bead Bonsai Tree
How to weave a bonsai bead is already clear. But how to put together individual branches and turn them into a miniature tree?
The assembly starts from the top, remembering that the trunk expands toward the base, becoming more powerful and stronger. A thicker wire is gradually added to the wire construction. She will not only make bonsai of beads longer reliable, but also strengthen it. Over the bonsai wire wrapped with the same floral tape or narrow masking tape, if the tape is not at hand.
When the tree is collected, it is given a conceived shape, it's time to install the trunk on a stand made of plaster or alabaster. At this stage, you will need a pot selected for bonsai. The tree is covered with cellophane film and, straightening the wire ends, set the bonsai in the bowl.
The composition is carefully poured with a solution of gypsum or alabaster. The same composition can be processed trunk. This technique allows you to perfectly imitate the bark, create irregularities and traces of hemp on the surface.
The finished composition is left for about a day until the mixture is completely dry. Handmade bonsai of beads is completely dry, and it's time to do its coloring and decoration. 
Stones are often used to grow real live bonsai. It is possible to imitate a piece of rock using foam plastic or sequentially folded pieces of drywall, glued together and processed with a thick paste based on gypsum. On such a layered "rock" is convenient to spread out the roots of twisted wire, made the same way as the branches.
The bonsai trunk of beads is covered with acrylic paint, it is also needed to paint the plaster base in the color of the soil or grass. The stand is decorated with:
- flowers woven from beads;
- with individual beads and small pebbles;
- glass, perfectly reproducing the appearance of the reservoir;
- figures of people, animals and birds;
- decorative buildings.
In order to bead bonsai not to be afraid of time and sunlight, the composition is coated with a colorless acrylic varnish. Where the tree is colored, this treatment is carried out twice, after the initial layer is completely dry.
Photos of bonsai from beads: an inexhaustible source of fantasy
Man-made trees are bright interior decorations that, even when using the same bonsai weaving scheme, always turn out to be unique. It is even more interesting to create copies of different tree species. Such a garden will not leave indifferent even a person who is far from gardening and handicraft!
The pink-shaded bonsai pictured on the photo looks as touching and gentle as a real cherry blossom.
A bright play of autumn colors is a tree that imitates Japanese maple.
There are even tiny cones on mountain pine woven from green beads. Bonsai reproduces the look of a tree, contrary to all the forces of nature that grew on the edge of a cliff.
Incredibly lush and decorative bonsai made of wisteria in the interior looks magnificent and decorative.
Caring for a bonsai of beads is a snap. It is enough to regularly remove dust and, if there are no elements on the composition that are afraid of water, occasionally carry out a gentle wet cleaning.
