Twig Craft Techniques

Simple Skills for Building Rustic Crafts

Some twig craft techniques that I use in my twiggy stuff are really simple and easy to master.

There are many ways to work with twigs to make unique and rustic twig crafts, but I try and keep it simple, and use these old time methods of building rustic stuff for my garden.

The best types of twigs are all around; use your garden prunings, or look for road crews cutting the brush in the ditches, or park maintenance workers.  They will be amused and doubtful that you can use the off cuts for making crafts; just walk away with a smile.  See which twigs are best here.

In most cases, I use hand tools such as a bush saw, or pruning saw to cut the biggest pieces, and loppers and pruners to cut the smaller twigs.

I recommend buying good quality tools - always!

You'll find it much easier to work with decent tools, and they'll last a long, long time, so it's cheaper in the long run as you won't need to replace them.

Finishing the ends of the pieces before attaching them will encourage the bark to stay on longer; I use a wood rasp to do this, and just take off the rough edges.

Push the rasp away from you all around the ends of the twigs.

To attach pieces together I either screw them in place using drywall screws (the black coloured screws pretty much disappear into the bark), nail them together with Ardox nails, or wire them using plain old tie wire.

The drywall screws are best used by first drilling a pilot hole through the top most piece and partially into the under piece, using a slightly smaller drill bit than the size of the screw.

This makes sure that the pieces won’t split under the pressure of the screw going through, and also that the screw itself won’t wind its way out in time as the wood shrinks.

The Ardox nails perform the same function, and rarely if ever do I have to go back and re-set the nails.

Wiring pieces can be an additional way of attaching the pieces, or instead of screwing or nailing them.

I rely on tie wire which is used for tying re-bar in concrete work, so it's pliable and easy to work with. As an added bonus, it rusts to a nice brown finish in the weathering process, making it almost invisible on your craft.

The pig tail on the ends of the wire will give a finished look to the piece, as well as eliminating sharp edges to catch on things.

I've been using twigs to make unique and rustic crafts for a long time, and I've found that the best techniques are the low tech kind - just imagine, the methods that our ancestors used for building their fences, chairs, and even dwellings are still in use to day.

Now that's sustainable living.

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