Birch crafts

Today, dachas and country houses resemble works of art in their appearance. People, running away from the bustle of the city, try to surround themselves with beauty, which manifests itself not only in architecture, but also in the interior decoration of the house, as well as in the design of the personal plot. There are a number of different items in stores to decorate your garden and home. But all this is not cheap. In addition, it is difficult to choose from factory products what will allow you to arrange a garden or a summer cottage in the same style. In such cases, hand-made crafts help out, which always looks original. Most often, birch wood is used for these purposes. As an additional material, it is worth paying attention to the original shape of the tree branches and foliage.

At the summer cottage, you can often find wood products: oak, spruce, pine and other species. But birch in this case has a number of advantages:

• it is easier to perform any manipulations with birch wood, since it has an average density and hardness;
• it has a weakly expressed texture, the structure is homogeneous;
• such material is not only easy to nail down, it lends itself to high-quality gluing on special glue;
• with the help of special paints and varnishes, a figure made of such wood can be given a reliable aesthetic appearance that will last for a long time.

Of the minuses, users of this material have highlighted the following:

• when excessively dry, birch wood is prone to cracking;
• considered unstable to decay;
• has a high probability of wormholes.

The disadvantages noted above can be easily corrected with the available chemical solutions.

Birch bark (birch bark) was widely used in handicrafts even among our ancestors, which, if properly prepared, is due to the flexibility of the material and the durability of the structure made of it.

For novice needlewomen, you need to know that birch bark can be collected at any time of the year, while it is always easily removed from the tree. To do this, it is enough to make a notch of the required width on the trunk with a sharp knife, after which we make cuts in a circle on both sides. Then we go a little deeper with a knife - and remove the birch bark. The condition of the tree from which the material is removed does not matter. It can be young or old birch, healthy or rotten.

In addition to traditional Russian bast shoes, various boxes, you can make a lot of souvenirs and decorative elements:

• brownie, which can be either in a box or without it;
• various dolls;
• flowers;
• paintings and picture frames.

Crafts are different, but they have a common manufacturing principle. The resulting material for flexibility is boiled for half an hour.

After preliminary processing with the help of scissors and a sharp knife, we make the necessary elements (leaves, heads for dolls, etc.). For gluing, we use ordinary PVA glue.

After that, the finished product, if necessary, is painted and dried well. Coated with varnish to give shine and durability.

The main advantage of working with birch logs as an improvised material is ease of use. Even the most inexperienced in this matter, the master can saw the log in the necessary way: lengthwise, across, into rings, in a semicircle. And then, using a hammer and nails, very cute garden exhibits can be folded from the presented blanks.

For manufacturing, you will need logs of different lengths and different diameters. For the legs, you need moderately thin, but high (4 pieces), for the body - a short log, but wide enough in diameter. For the manufacture of the muzzle, a short (shorter than the body), but relatively wide log is also used, which will be connected to the body with a thin log that plays the role of a neck. Ears are made from any segments (preferably ovals) and a nose, which can be from a small round trim. The eyes and mouth are most often drawn. The above parts are joined together using a conventional hammer and nails. You can also complement the resulting figure with a wooden rider (this can be, for example, a hare) or a cart in which a flower bed will be placed.

The step-by-step instructions for making a hare are almost the same as for making a donkey. The difference lies in the shape of the parts, their size and location. It is rather difficult to make a hare standing on 4 legs, and such a figure made of logs will probably not look very attractive. The easiest way is to imagine the animal sitting on its hind legs.

For this, short logs of the same size are taken. If there is such an opportunity, then you can make a recess in the middle of them for planting the body. The body is a log, which in an upright position is attached to the logs, which play the role of legs. If for some reason it is difficult to make a deepening, then you can do without it. Only instead of a drawn mouth, as in the case of a horse, it would be better to use 3 small circles placed side by side (2 at the top, and 1 at the bottom). The upper ones create the appearance of a mustache, and the lower ones - the mouth. Logs imitating paws are best attached to the sides; you can attach a factory or self-made carrot dummy to them.

A bear, like a hare, is made in a sitting position on its hind legs. The sizes of the logs, as in the previous cases, depend on the proportion of the figure. The peculiarity of making a bear is that the muzzle should be large, in diameter it will correspond to the diameter of the body. The eyes and mouth can be made from old plastic bottle caps, or a small jar lid is more suitable for the mouth. The mentioned parts are nailed down. In such cases, the facial features of the bear take on a funny and frightening look.

A cat, like a horse, can be made standing on 4 legs. To fix the head, as in the case of the hare and the bear, the neck is not needed. To do this, pin a round segment of a rather small thickness to the edge of the body. Semicircles are used as ears. Eyes can also be made from plastic bottle caps. The nose is a very small round piece. The mouth is represented by two round log cabins, which must be larger than the nose and located under it. A piece of red fabric in the shape of a tongue sticks out of these round pieces, and a vine or broom branches are attached to the round pieces themselves, which act as a mustache.

Diverse little men made of logs of different lengths and widths look unusual on the personal plot. Their creation is not particularly different from the creation of the animals presented above. You need to be guided mainly by your imagination.

Branches and leaves of trees complement well not only crafts made from birch logs, but are also widely used to create decorative ikebana on their own.

Using them as additional material, you can make, for example, feathers for birds, hair for Baba Yaga and any other character.

Portable flower beds look original on a personal plot, the pots of which are pasted over with thin twigs in a circle, their length can be either the same or different. As a finishing touch, it is recommended to tie the pot decorated with branches with a ribbon of the color of the flowers growing in it.

If we consider branches and leaves as an independent material for needlework, then you can make several more options for crafts.

Panel, which is a square (the shape can be any) of densely spaced branches. You can decorate the product with a birch bark flower or a flower arrangement of dry leaves coated with varnish. The bouquet is complemented by thin branches of different lengths.

From thicker branches, you can make a staircase, which in winter descends from the balcony with a figure of Santa Claus attached to it. To make this composition, it is enough to tie the branches with a rope on both sides. And if there is a drill at home, then for the durability of the structure, it is better to drill a small hole at the edges of the branches with a thin drill through which the rope is passed. After pulling the rope, remember to make knots at both the top and bottom so that the branch bar is fixed.

For outdoor decor, an old picture frame is used, the corner of which is also decorated with a bouquet of dry branches and leaves. We insert a longer rope into the frame, decorating the tree near the porch or the porch itself with it.

A tall vase with the same tall bouquet of flowers from dry leaves will look unforgettable. The resulting flowers (the easiest way to make roses) is put on high branches. To make flowers, we take dry leaves of large sizes (preferably maple leaves), fold them in half and, putting such details on top of each other, form a rose, which is tightly tied with a rope at the bottom so that the foliage does not disintegrate. You need to form a rose on a branch, otherwise it will not be inserted later. Finished bouquets can be varnished so that they do not disintegrate and shine. It is better to choose branches for a bouquet of different heights, otherwise it will look bare, since there will be no leaves on it.

Thinking about the design of a personal plot, it is advisable to plan it in the same style. It can be village motives, a fairy kingdom, and so on. After that we decide on decorations that should not be concentrated in one place. Their location must be approached thoroughly so that everything looks harmonious.

If you plan to use a rustic style for decoration, then benches, tables and chairs made of birch logs, arranged in a certain sequence, will look original. If there is a gazebo on the personal plot, then in the opposite side from it, on the lawn or under a tree, we install a table made by ourselves and several chairs for it. In large areas, in such cases, it will be necessary to place, for example, a wooden bench not far from the gazebo and the table. In this case, all furniture should be either rough processing, or, in general, no processing.

An old metal frame from a chaise longue can be turned into original furniture by gluing birch logs close to it. It should be noted that the material will need to be properly processed: cut off all knots and sand well.

The products presented above can be supplemented with a flower bed made from the trunk of a fallen tree. To do this, using a chisel and a hammer, we gouge out the inner part so that a depression is obtained, which is filled with earth. It will be easier to gouge if you make cuts around the perimeter of the intended hole with a regular or electric saw. By the way, you can go deeper with an electric saw.To make the resulting trough stable, you need to pin the halves of the cut log along the edges.

From cuts of birches, you can make original paths in the garden or garden. It should be noted that the paths are massive, so between the beds of slightly growing crops (carrots, beets) they will not look harmonious. It is more expedient to lay them between raspberry bushes, for example, since the bush, growing rapidly, erases all previously paved paths. And if you properly form a path from saw cuts on them in the spring, then you can safely walk between the bushes in the summer.

To do this, first of all, we lay a sandy base higher, on which rubble stones are placed in a loose layer. Everything is necessary, trampling, tamp. After that, we lay out the cuts as close as possible to each other. Since the tree is not resistant to the appearance of various insects in it, it is recommended to use unaffected logs for this purpose. In addition, it is advisable to treat them with solutions that prevent the appearance of rot, since with the right approach, the path can last for several years.

In addition to the crafts presented above, a decorative wooden bridge, which can be placed near the lushly overgrown bushes, will look good. Small dummies of wells are also made in the areas, to which a box with water can be attached for visibility. It can also be used as a flower bed.

Another interesting product can be a small bridge thrown over a dry stream or body of water. Bridges can be humped, which is not easy to make at home, but you can also make a bridge with a slight bend. This is done at the expense of the staircase, reminiscent of steps, which are subsequently covered with birch logs.

Not all interesting ideas could be found in the article, so we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the original crafts by watching the following video.