Here are a few photos of a couple of the palm trees I made last week. I made 6 in total for a restaurant.  They wanted a couple of monkeys too.

Wow. What a lot of work. They look wonderful and as usual your artwork just puts the finishing touch on them!

Thank you.  My artwork is really quite simple. Not as good as some of the lovely stuff I have seen but it does.  Here is one of the trees with the base on. I was not sure how well the tree would stand up but it seemed to work ok.

Great pics Thelma.  I love the one with the monkey sitting behind him.  

When I saw the title of this thread, and who posted it, I thought 'this ain't going to be your normal monkey in a palm tree'.

Boy, how right I was - superb, Thelma.

Dave

I like it!!

Its nice to see a different take on the tree trunk makes a change from the tack weave that most use for a big tree. Must have taken ages.

Roger

a cut above Thelma :-)

Thanks everyone.  I did take some time over the first one with the bulge half way up the trunk.  The second one was a lot quicker.  By the time I had finished tree number 6 I had it down to production line speed. Maybe I will time myself properly next time I make some and let you know.   Also ------ I took the trees a couple at a time into town to deliver them.   When I got out of my car and took the first tree out I got a tap on the shoulder (boy that was a wet experience hahaha) anyway this guy said "Its my wifes birthday coming up soon.  How much will you charge for one of those"  I threw a price at him and he asked form my card saying he would call and let me know how many he wanted..  The walk from the car park to the restaurant is 3 min.  I gave loads of cards away during that walk.  Well it took longer than three minutes due to the people asking for my card.  So to everyone who is short of work make a tree and carry it round the town.  You will be called that mad tree person but what the hell!!!  I will answer to anything if it gets me good work.

Wife "Awesome!"

Me "Wow ---!!!"

Those explain the thoughts.  Awesome work, love it!  Thanks for the inspiration.

If my wife wasn't awesome too, I'd think you may be boasting, Natking...

And nice work, Thelma, is that 2 blush 646's inside each one?...  Is the bulge to cover a connection, or to make it more palmtree-like?

Thanks for the laugh Charles.  

It was two Qualatex blush 646 or whateve they are called.  The bulge is in at the connection point.  I trie a different way to do the join on most of the trees but liked this one best.  However the bulge took about as long to do as the rest of the covering altogether.  So not very practical if you are making a lot of them.  If I were doing a single tree again I would definitely take the time to do it this way though becuase I found it looked the best.  Also when the balloons start to soften I imagine this one would be the one that stays up the longest as it is stronger at the mid section.  I had made them with the intention that they shoud be placed at the edge of the room but when I added the bases to them a couple of the must stood upright straight with no need to fiddle.  I was very sruprised because I thoght they would be too top heavy with such a long trunk.  A couple of the other trees wanted to bend over.  I think the big balloon inside was slightly softer and so they were not rigid enough.  To counter this problem I attached an uninflated balloon to the base and took it up inside the weave pulling it tight as I went and twisting it in occasionally till it was as stretched up the trunk as i could get it.  I did the quater of the way round eachtime with four balloons and it made the tree stand more solid and it stopped trying to bend over.  Next time I will make sure the 646 is very solid.  ITs getting the balance between getting the tree strong and rigid and not blowing the balloon up so hard it will pop.

Thats Brilliant !!

Great variation of the palm tree.


Debbie @ WOW Balloons

Again Thelma, I am in awe!  I don't have a clue how you did it but it is wonderful indeed.