I have wanted to come up with a way to make a DIY Whomping Willow forever. I have tried paper mache, and lots of different kinds of material just to figure out just what I wanted. Eventually, I bought a bunch of wire and began twisting. At first, the gauge of my wire was too thin and the tree wouldn’t stand up. I moved to thicker and thicker wire until I landed on 18 gauge. The wire was difficult to twist and hard to work with but with a lot of patience, I was able to create just what I wanted.
I absolutely love how this tree turned out and it is the perfect statement piece on my bookshelves.
Some tips before you get started.
- Buy your wire in the hardware section. You can find it in the craft section but it is going to be a lot less wire for a lot more expensive. You need a lot of wire, so go for the cheaper, large package in the hardware section.
- This project needs quite a bit of patience. I worked on it small bits at a time over the course of a week.
- Working with this wire can be hard on your hands. Gardening gloves can really help.
- Make sure you don’t make your tree taller than your dome.
Harry Potter DIY Wire Whomping Willow
You will need:
- 18 gauge wire
- a dowel to wrap the wire around
- needle nose pliers with wire cutters
- a foam half circle
- brown spray paint
- green moss
- wood slices that fit inside your glass dome
- a glass dome
- hot glue
- Ford Anglia Hot Wheels
Start by twisting wire around your dowel, over and over again. You want to twist the wire as close together as possible. If you can’t get it really tight, you can pinch the wire together after you pull it off the dowel with the needle-nose pliers.
Your first coil of wire needs to be the fill height of your tree. Mine is about 4 inches long. After you have one long coil, work on your four branches. Each of my branches are about two inches long.
Twist your branches into your trunk coil at various point. Make sure to twist the branches into your coil far enough that they are stable and stay up on their own. Twist your long trunk coil into your half-circle of styrofoam until the coil stands up on its own.
For each branch, cut three small lengths of wire, about 1 inch in length. Dab each wire in hot glue and then place the, down the center of your branch coils.
Once you have your tree standing up, spray the entire thing with brown spray paint. There are a lot of surfaces in your coils, so it will probably take about 3 coats to get everything nice and coated.
Place your willow tree on top of a wood slice, I added a second wood slice to give my tree a little bit more height in my dome.
Cover your styrofoam with green moss and rocks if you desire.
Add your Ford Anglia. I bought a Hot Wheels version of the car, but I have also seen people print out a paper version if they didn’t want to track down the toy car. I hot glued the car into the tree, so it wouldn’t move when I added the glass dome.
Add your dome and you have an awesome Harry Potter statement piece.
I absolutely love how this turned out. It was well worth the work!
Where would you display your Whomping Willow.
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I love this and was skimming on Pinterest, for something for my Movie Room. I have made a Beauty and the beast, in the same fashion,and look forward to making this,thank you for sharing your story with us.