It really does look like a tree!

Well, here it is. I have a dead car battery and am stuck at home so I had to improvise the leaves and smaller branches but I like it. Here's how I made it - I started with 6 pipe cleaners twisted together at the base for the main trunk. The top third of the pipe cleaners I spread out, then twisted 2 sets of 2 together about 1/2 of the top section. That gave me 2 long main branches and 2 forked branches. Then I covered the entire assembly with aluminum foil to give it bulk and strength. Next, I covered all of that with thin sheets of polymer clay. This is a good opportunity to use up those miscellaneous scraps because it's all going to be painted anyway. I used a pointed tool to add bark-like texture and baked the tree. I propped the branches up with clumps of foil to keep them spaced correctly. After baking and cooling, I painted a first coat of dark brown glaze over everything. The glaze is thin enough to get into all the crevices of the bark and give it depth. Then I drybrushed various shades of brown, gray and black over the whole tree. I drilled holes around the branches to put the silk leaf branches in. Then I glued the trunk to my base. It is also supported by a thin dowel and a large screw - both through the base board. I had some silk ivy on hand so I cut each leaf down to scale, painted the branches to match the rest of the tree and glued various sized branches and numbers of leaves into the holes. It all sounds much more complicated than it was to actually just do it, lol.