Can you make a wire bonsai tree like in this tutorial? You sure can. Here is one made by Blake! It came out great and my thanks go to Blake for sharing the picture with us!!
Some of the materials you will use for this tutorial include various thicknesses of wire, paint, construction paper, containers of almost any type, gloss gel and terrain textures.
 This is an optional step but you might want to give it a try. Bonsai have a very distinct look and shape. And if you find a picture of one that you really like you can use some tracing paper to get the shape of it.
From here we know how we are going to twist the wire. And we get a good sense for how thick the trunk is in comparison to the tree overall, and the branches. This will be your guide.
We chose a couple of bonsai for their appealing shape, thick trunk and large leaves. The large leaves are easy to reproduce.
Cut yourself a piece of thick wire that is twice the height of your bonsai tree. This wire we use at this point is coat hanger. Bend it in half with a big loop on the bottom.
And you can see we have an actual bonsai dish which is great. But you can use anything. I will also show you how we use a little can of cat food for our other bonsai.
Pass that loop right through the holes in the bottom of the dish.
If your dish has no holes you can use a piece of foam, or even wood or rock and wrap the wire around that. You will glue this block into the dish later.
If you are using a pot with no hole or using some kind of other container it is easy to just build the tree on your block of foam then glue it into the container once the wiring is all done.
  
Start the upward twisting. First twisting those two ends together. Then start adding more pieces that twist upward.
Just pinch, squish, and twist it together as stable as you can. We will be adding to it later so it doesn't have to be pretty at this point.
It is starting to look like a bonsai tree.
 As we work out the the smaller branches we use smaller gauge wire which is thinner. Note that if you are buying wire the higher the number gauge the thinner the actual wire. 24 gauge wire is a lot thinner than 18 gauge wire and 28 gauge wire is thinner still.
Now add even more smaller wires for small branches like this. And you can group them up to get a fuller look.
Twist them up in appealing shapes.
Now, before we start fleshing out the trunk and branches bend all the wires of the tree to an appealing shape.
Now start adding aluminum foil.
You are adding small pieces at a time but don't cut the foil, rip it. This gives you a nice uneven and barky look.
Build up the trunk by wrapping some of the foil round and round the wire
Keep wrapping the bark, pushing it in very tightly. But you don't want it smooth. You want it wrinkled. It gives a nice bark appearance. You want the texture of the scrunched up foil to show through. It gives the tree a natural bark-like texture.
The bark is finished and it looks great. Let's Paint it and do more detail work.
 Ok, Let's continue making this bonsai by adding the bark and leaves
Two Ceramic Bonsai Pots
18 Gauge Artistic Wire
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