Faux Fir - Making Artificial Trees Look Less Artificial

For those decades, the "industry standard" for artificial tree branches involved fine, but stiff "needles" made of extruded plastic. These were bound between two twisted steel wires like bristles in a bottle brush. The better brands had more branches than the cheap brands, and the needles toward the tips were bent outward and sometimes trimmed to make a blunt point.

All told, they made a pretty good imitation of Scotch pines, if you didn't mind the too-perfect shape and overly dark, homogeneous color.

In later years, though, short-needled trees like Spruce and Fir have become more popular on tree lots. The "bottle brush" approach alone wouldn't work to represent those trees, because the steel wires would be too exposed by the short needles. In addition, more color variation was desired.

Designers of artificial trees have done much research to determine what characteristics of the real trees they can represent without completely remachining their factories. On replicas of short-needled trees, the wires themselves may be painted or otherwise disguised. And those wires usually hold two or three different sizes and colors of "needles": short brown needles that stand in for the "scaley" bark of the tips and small branches, and longer, green and blue-green needles that imitate the color variations of the real trees' needles. If you look closely, you're realize that those needles are all cut from sheets of vinyl or nylon fabric, but if they make a pretty good stand-in for the needles of trees like Hemlocks and some firs, on which the needles are somewhat flat.

Short-needled trees add two "complications," however:

• They require more "branches" to look as "full" as the long-needled trees.
• Even with more branches, you will probably be able to see "through" the tree to the trunk and beyond. If you think about it, you can see through most real fir and spruce trees, so this isn't necessary a problem, but it may affect how you set up the tree.

Note: We went to an artificial tree after several years of using Frazier Firs, so we wanted a "short-needled" look. The tree used in the photos for this article came from a Franks' Nursery that went out of business in Huber Heights, Ohio, several years ago, so there's almost zero chance of you coming up with the same exact tree. This tree has a high number of "tips," as well, a spec that the better vendors are now listing on their boxes. Chances are your artificial tree is a little "thinner." However, the principles presented in this article apply to any artificial tree you're trying to make look more real.

Nowadays, some artificial tree manufacturers are mixing technologies to reduce the uniformity that betrays many artificial trees. Some trees use longer, extruded "bottle-brush"-style needles near the trunk and shorter needles toward the tip. A few use all molded artificial rubber needles at the tip, with more traditional cut or extruded needles near the trunk. At first, the three-dimensional look and feel of the molded needles is almost convincing, especially for trees like Blue Spruce, whose branch tips have a round cross-section. But for me the jury is still out on whether they'll hold up as well in the long run as the cut or extruded needles.

However your artificial tree is made, you may get some ideas for making it look better by reading the rest of this article.

The "Department Store Stockperson" Approach

The "Imitation of Nature" Approach

On Scotch pines, the branches tend to curve out and up, which helps to hide the trunk, on real and artificial Scotch pines alike.

But, on most short-needled trees, the branches tend to just grow out, especially on young specimens. When those branches branch out, those smaller branches also tend to grow "out," not up and/or down. They spread more-or-less along the same plane, like a deck of cards being fanned out in the hands of a dealer.

Most artificial short-needled trees today mimic the growth pattern of a real tree - the branches are divided into clusters or "layers." In a tree that comes apart, the branches that will make up each layer are usually color-coded.

The "department store approach" attempts to defeat this pattern instead of allowing it to contribute to the realism of the "tree." But there is a better approach that may get folks doing "double-takes" in your living room. There are three basic parts:

• Tree-fluffing,
• Trunk camouflaging, and
• Tip tweaking

Tree-Fluffing

The "rule of thumb" in trimming real "specimen" conifers is that if two tips or branches are side by side and exactly parallel, one of them is redundant. When I'm trimming real Dwarf Alberta Spruce trees (and many others), I cut out redundant branches. On an artifical tree, though, I get rid of redundancies by spreading out the branches and tips so they are no longer parallel.

Working on a "branch" at a time, spread the tips apart from each other, at least 10 degrees, and usually no more than 30. As you work, you may notice that a branch has an "upper and lower" set of tips, that you can raise and lower a bit to give a fuller vertical dimension. Within each final horizontal "layer" you can go back and tweak every other tip to go up or down, say 10 degrees, off of the branch's basic vertical axis. No branch should closely parallel another branch if possible. Remember, in nature, each branch and branch tip is seeking light, so, if the tree is getting good light from three sides, the branches and tips WILL spread out. (Again, don't get carried away and bend the outward tips up, out, and around in an unrealistic star pattern - that defeats the purpose.)

When you've fluffed a branch, it should still look natural, but will look much more "three-dimensional" than the other branches. If you have a large tree, and it was packed away very tightly, you may want to enlist some help. The photo to the right shows the first layer of brushes after they've been "fluffed" and attached. Hopefully you can see that a tree that has been "fluffed" this way will have a much more interesting and realistic texture than one that is put together right out of the box. You can also see how fluffing the "inner" branches contributes to the overall "fullness" of the tree. That's why fluffing the outter few inches of the tree after it's been assembled is less effective.

"Tree-fluffing" may seem like a silly concept, but among teams of professionals who set up seasonal displays, such as Christmas train displays, Santa villages, and so on, there are often people who do "tree-fluffing" as their primary responsibility. Just think, what if you had to list "tree-fluffer" as your occupation on tax or financial forms! How about "twig tweaker"? "Arboreal arranger"? Okay, I'm being silly, but the point is, there are actually people who get paid to do this, at least part of the time. If the professional display designers think it's important enough to pay for, that says something. And once you develop an "eye" for this sort of thing, you'll notice right away when you pass a display that was set up in a hurry or by amateurs.

What If Your Tree Comes in One Piece? Most prelit trees and many others come with all of the branches "pre-assembled," so you don't have the luxury of fluffing the tree out one branch at a time. However the principles still applies. The photos to the right show a single-piece "twig tree" before and after "fluffing." You can see that, even on a relatively simple tree, "fluffing" creates a much more interesting texture and gives you many more useful places to hang ornaments.

Trunk Camouflaging

Eventually, having lights and ornaments on the outer six inches of the tree will tend to draw visitors eyes away from the trunk, so most tree designers don't consider ugly trunks to present a problem to good decorators. On my tree, the manufacturer provided a bit of unrealistic-looking garland to camouflage the trunk a little, but it's not enough to hide the black plastic tube, much less the plastic "junctions" where the branches go in.

I like to take a piece of "fir" garland and wrap it around the trunk as I add each layer of branches. This gives me the extra material I need to disguise the trunk's ugliest aspects as I go. Ironically, once the garland is in place, it's difficult to photograph properly, since it blends in so well, so I don't have a useful photo of this step.

Tip Tweaking

If your tree is not pre-lit and you wans to add lights, this will give you an additional opportunity to inspect your work as you add each strand. For some hints about lighting trees, see our article on "Lighting Christmas Trees with Miniature Light Strands."

Finally, as the ornaments go on, some will need more space than you've allotted, and some will need less, so you can make further adjustments. To get an idea of what our tree looks like close-up after we've added lights and ornaments, click on the title photo.

Conclusion

As we come across more hints in the future, we'll add them, but in the meantime, we wanted to get you thinking about how to make "art imitate life" a little more effectively in your home this season.

We are especially hoping that this article helps you have a happy and safe holiday season.

Please contact us with any questions, corrections, additions, or other suggestions.

And have a great family Christmas,

Paul and Shelia Race

www.familychristmasonline.com