Hanging Manzanita Trees

Manzanita Branches can be used for more than just centerpieces. Of course when folks think about decorating their walls, they think about pictures and perhaps a mirror or two. Decorative branches such as Manzanita Trees provide a great alternative. Hanging them is just about as quick and simple as hanging a picture.

It's as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Tap in a picture hanger where you want the branch to hang;
2. Find where the branch balances in the orientation you want; and
3. Hang the branch!

Below is a large Natural Manzanita Branch adding a botanical accent to a headboard

And here's a Sandblasted Manzanita Tree in a vertical orientation providing a driftwood like accent to the bathroom:

Manzanita Holiday Displays

Anne Schuster designed these beautiful holiday displays using our Sandblasted Manzanita Branches, which provide contrasting color and form to really accentuate the ornaments. The results are fantastic!

Gold Manzanita Branches

Brooke Harris of Fresh Urban Flowers in San Antonio spray painted our 60" Natural Manzanita Branches gold and used them to create these gorgeous pieces.

Securing Manzanita Branches with Spray Foam... continued

In a previous post we discussed a post on another blog about securing Manzanita Branches with spray foam. We tried it ourselves, and it worked great. The spray foam expands and hardens to really lock in the branches, and is much easier and less of a hassle to use than plaster... as long as you're careful! Here's how to do it.

1. Get your supplies - Manzanita Branches, Spray Foam (available throughout big box home improvement stores), Crushed Stone (found in the landscaping section for a few dollars a big bag), a pot, some rubber bands, and disposable gloves.

2. If you are using more than one Manzanita Branch, secure the Manzanita Branches together in the orientation you want them relative to one another. Doing so will allow you to just work with one unit, rather than multiple ones.

3. Hold the Manzanita Branch in the position you want it, and pour in enough crushed stone to hold the branch in place - a few inches should do the trick. In addition to holding the branch in place, it will help keep the display steady by putting a lot of weight in the bottom of the container. The Spray Foam doesn't provide any stabilizing weight, so this is especially important if you will be hanging items from the branches.

4. Put your rubber gloves on and spray in some floral foam, stopping in an inch or two from the top. When it comes out, the consistency is like whipped cream, but in a few hours it expands and hardens. Don't get this stuff on anything as it is a pain to remove! If you spray too much in and it mushrooms over the top, you can cut it back with a knife.

5. After curing overnight, the branches are secure and the display is ready to go. You can cover the foam up with something like sand, stone or Reindeer Moss.

Manzanita Branch with Butterflies

Here's a picture of a beautifully simple centerpiece that a customer made with a Natural Manzanita Branch. It may be tempting to load up branches with all sorts of items, but often just a few elements can have a great impact and really let the form of the branch stand out.

Manzanita Family Tree on Good Housekeeping

The folks at Good Housekeeping created a "family tree" using our 18-24" Natural Manzanita Branches. Check out the project and directions over on their site!

Securing Manzanita Branches with Spray Foam

A while back we did a post on Securing Manzanita Branches with Plaster (and did a follow up post as well where we didn't pour the plaster directly into the pot) where we temporarily secured the branch in an inexpensive clay pot with some crushed stone and poured plaster in to permanently secure the Manzanita Branch.

Plaster works great because it is very strong and really holds the branch in the pot well. Furthermore, the weight of the plaster helps keep the display stable. These attributes are particularly important if you are going to be loading up the branches with heavy objects.

However, working with plaster can be a hassle, can create quite a mess, and it can get expensive, particularly if you need to create a lot of displays. Confronted with these issues, the author of Doodles, Dabbles and Dreams used spray foam instead and wrote a great blog posted titled Manzanita Madness! on the process.

The photo above from the blog post shows the spray foam in the process of expanding. Definitely check out the post!

We haven't tried securing Manzanita Branches with spray foam ourselves (we will soon!) but it seems like an a great alternative to plaster if you aren't going to be hanging a lot of heavy items from the branches.

As for spray foam itself, last spring I learned quite a bit about it while using it to fill gaps between the logs of an old cabin in the Adirondacks. First and foremost, you don't want it to get on anything, particularly your skin - make sure you are wearing gloves. Secondly, the stuff really expands, and when you start, make sure you err on the side of using too little.

I'll be getting some cans of spray foam and start playing with it (carefully!) soon!

Manzanita Centerpieces with Butterflies

A customer sent us some pictures of the wonderful centerpieces she created with the 48" Natural Manzanita Branches. Two branches were painted a chocolate brown and decorated with paper and vellum butterflies. For the bases, the Manzanita Branches were set in mortar, then wrapped with birch bark and topped with moss.

Fall Manzanita Branch Centerpiece Mockup

When preparing for a large event, something we always recommend is to do a mockup before buying all the materials, which allows one to more precisely determine quantities and how to execute the designs, and discover any unanticipated costs and complications.

Amber M. is getting married next fall and wasn't sure about making her own centerpieces. After doing some research on the site and the blog, and emailing us some follow-up questions (encouraged and always welcome!) she was confident enough to take the plunge and do a mock-up.

The result is this beautiful and simple Manzanita centerpiece. Note that just one Manzanita Branch is used for the display - using just one allows the form of the branch to really stand out, and of course it helps keep the cost down. She reports that the total cost should come out to less than $15.00 for each centerpiece.

Manzanita Centerpieces with Hydrangeas

Sigh Robes-Castillo used our Project Grade 24-36" Natural Manzanita Branches and ideas from the blog to create these gorgeous manzanita centerpieces for her wedding, adorned with hanging votives, crystal strands and fuchsia hydrangeas.

Sigh first contacted us back in May 2009 requesting that we do a post on creating stand alone plaster bases. A few weeks later, we put up the post Securing Manzanita Branches with Plaster... continued, describing the technique.

Using the techniques described in the post DIY Hanging Votive Holders, Sigh created her own hanging votive holders.

Instead of using naturally fuchsia hydrangeas (which were running $7 a stem at the time), Sigh used white hydrangeas ($2 a stem) and colored them with floral spray paint.

In addition to these gorgeous displays, Sigh wanted to have some larger flowering trees on either side of the altar. At that time of year, flowering trees were running $2000 to $3000 each, so she decided to make her own from Mountain Laurel branches (available in the NYC floral district) and white hydrangeas.

You can read more about the wedding here and here.

Sandblasted Manzanita Branches and Votives

The 18-24" and 24-36" sizes of Manzanita Branches are what's most commonly used for centerpieces, but other sizes can work great as well. We recently received an email and some photos from Monique S., who made some fabulous centerpieces using our Project Grade 12-18" Sandblasted Manzanita Branches:

Hello-

Just wanted to drop a note thanking you for the great quality of your products. I ordered a case of manzanita branches from your site a few months ago and was able to create beautiful, unique and relatively inexpensive centerpieces for our outdoor wedding last month using your products and suggestions from your blog. Everyone commented on them and I actually was able to sell them via craigslist to another bride! I included a few pics so you could see the end result! Thanks again!

Monique

(The pictures are by Kristin Castenschiold of B and K Photography.)

As the email and pictures demonstrate, by going with Manzanita Branches on the smaller end of the scale, you can create some fantastic centerpieces while keeping the per centerpiece cost lower than what it would be if you used larger branches. 

Thanks again to Monique S. for the email and pictures!

Decorative Branches as an Alternative to Fake Plants

Decorative branches are a fantastic alternative to fake plants in places where very low maintenance botanical elements are desired. (The only maintenance required is occasional dusting.) The folks at Floral Ecstacy in Miami, Florida (305 670 1230), sent us these pictures of how they used our Mitsumata, Sandblasted Manzanita and Natural Manzanita branches to create large-scale installations to be used in commercial settings. 

Crystal Tree with Hanging Votives

Here's a 36-42" Natural Manzanita Branch, set in plaster, painted silver, illuminated with hanging votives and adorned with a few crystals. Whew, that's a lot of links for one sentence! 

Manzanita Crystal Tree

Crystal Trees are a very popular item for weddings and we frequently get questions about them, yet until recently I had never actually made one. Here is one constructed from a 36-42" Natural Manzanita Branch that I had set in plaster and then painted silver. 

 

The Crystal Tree I made, catching some afternoon sunshine.  

The Crystal Tree illuminated from below with votives. I tried hanging votives from the branches as well, but decided that there was way too much going on in the branches with all the crystals. As votives are so prominent, the placement really matters and it is best to hang the votives first, and then arrange the crystals.

The shadows of the branches cast on the ceiling. 

Now here's the story. While wandering through my lovely local Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn, I came across boxes of five crystals marked down to $.50 from $3.99. They certainly weren't fine crystal, but the price was right and I emptied the shelves. The plan was to "just" slap these on the manzanita branch I had set in plaster, then had painted silver, and - ta-da! - a Crystal Tree. I quickly discovered that hanging crystals is a lot more time consuming and had more pitfalls than I thought it would.

The crystals came with some thick wires for hanging, but they didn't allow the crystals to hang right - they sort of veered off to one side. I realized that I had to hang them myself. The first thing I tried was fine floral wire, but it was too thick and prominent. 

Next I tried some 25 lb test monofilament. In terms of strength, this monofilament was definitely overkill, but it was nice and stiff so the crystals would be less likely to get tangled together. The knot I first used was an Improved Clinch Knot, which is the knot I've used for fishing since a kid - I used it to tie the crystal onto the monofilament, and then to create a loop at the other end to to hang the crystal from the branch. The trouble with this knot is that it is bulky, and the loop pulls closed very easily. 

The knot that I ended up using and worked best was a Bowline Knot (a diagram of which I came across a few days before in an ad for a mens clothing store) - the knot is small, strong and when you put tension on it, the loop doesn't close. A gazillion knots and a good portion of my weekend later, I had my Crystal Tree. This took a heck of a lot longer than I had anticipated. 

A couple days later, I was working on another version of a crystal tree (hanging votives and turquoise crystals), among other projects... 

...when it occurred to me - instead of creating a loop to hang the crystal from the branch, WHY DIDN'T I JUST TIE A CRYSTAL ONTO THE OTHER END!?  I could then wrap the pair of crystals around the branch, adjust their relative height and distance from each other and cut the amount of work I had to do in half. There had to be a catch! I have yet to think of or come across one, and have come to the conclusion that I made a rather time-consuming oversight. 

Manzanita Branch Cover-Up

When working with Natural Manzanita Branches, you might want to trim a few branches to open up the display, or for other reasons. 

But once you trim a branch, you expose the blonde wood, which contrasts starkly against the rich brown bark. 

If you think this looks a little jarring, simply get out a black permanent marker and color the cut. While not quite perfect, the cut will blend right in. 

Dried Branches and Fresh Flowers

Dried branches don't like getting wet, but that doesn't mean you can't create centerpieces using both dried branches and fresh flowers. Here are some examples of branch centerpieces we've made incorporating fresh flowers. 

Mitsumata Branches with Dendrobium Orchids.

For this, we simply attached floral tubes to the branches with cable ties on the top and the bottom (using just one would allow it to tip over). We decided that the flower stem looked best held close to the branches, so we loosely attached the top of the stem to the Mitsumata branches with a cable tie. 

Mitsumata Branches, Fountain Grass and Dendrobium Orchids.  With the orchids and floral tubes securely attached to the Mitsumata Branches, it was easy making a slightly more complex arrangement. One bundle of Fountain Grass does a great job of adding texture and filling out the arrangement.

Here we made a Sandblasted Manzanita centerpiece with orchids using a branch that we had previously set in plaster. Once we buried the base in pea gravel, we set the floral tubes on top of the pea gravel, then attached the orchid stem to the Manzanita branch with a single white cable tie. The finishing touch was to fill the top of the vase with Reindeer Moss. 

Just a few orchids on a Sandblasted Manzanita centerpiece can have a huge impact. We attached the flowers with small cable ties. Note that no floral tubes are used here - Dendrobium orchid flowers hold up well for a few hours without water. 

Twisted Willow Branches and Lilies. For this display, we placed a smaller diameter vase holding the lilies and water inside a larger vase. We then added some crushed stone to hold the relative positions of the vases and added in the Twisted Willow Branches. 

Branches as Beach Decor

Beach decor is heavy on weathered finishes and colors, and sandblasted branches such as Sandblasted Manzanita Branches and Grapewood Branches fit right in, as illustrated in a few window displays in NYC. 

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