I've spent three days now working on a Christmas tree for the layout. My first effort was not at all satisfactory; but the end result is pretty good, and I tried some new things and learned a few good lessons along the way.
I ordered a fiber optic kit from a guy on eBay, thinking it would be easy to run some fiber optics through the branches of a bottle brush pine to represent Christmas lights. Turns out, not so easy. The results of my first attempt were less than satisfactory.
First off, it was a lot harder than I imagined to get the fibers to go where I wanted and stay there; when I got them sort of in place, I found there was a lot of light leakage along the shaft of the fibers -- though to be fair, it's a lot worse with my cell phone camera's low light enhancement than in real life.
Day 2: After ruminating over several solutions, I decided to go back to square one, and start by enhancing the tree. I took a larger tree out of the box I purchased, clipped at the "branches" with a pair of scissors to give the tree a more realistic and irregular shape, then sprayed it with dark brown spray paint, which among other things helps to hide the wire trunk.
Then I sprinkled it with Woodland Scenics Conifer Green Clump Foliage torn into small chunks, holding it in place with liberal applications of hair spray. I followed that with a heavy covering of Conifer Green Coarse Turf.
At the very least, the tree looks a lot more like a tree now. When the hairspray dries, I'll see what I can do with lights. I'm thinking I'll camouflage the shaft of the fibers with dark brown or green paint. The heavier foliage should also help hide them.
Day 3: I decided the first modified tree was too large (though I'll still use it on the Frazier Borate or some future layout). I started over with a smaller one.
As before, I clipped the branches to give it a more irregular shape. I decided it would be easier to install the fiber optics before adding foliage, and since I was going to paint both the tree and the fibers brown, I went ahead and did the fibers next. I secured them with some dabs of CA gel here and there. Once I was happy with that, I sprayed the whole thing dark brown.
When the paint was dry, I went back and clipped a bit off any ends that had gotten covered with paint. Then I gave it the same foliage treatment as before.
The clipped ends of the optic fibers showed white instead of color. I found that it was easy to re-color them with a Sharpie.
I think it looks pretty good, so I went ahead and installed it on the layout. It still needs a bit of snow.
I also made a little wreath for the front door of the cabin, cutting a ring of cardboard and gluing on bits of conifer clump foliage. Now I'm working on upgrading the rest of the trees.
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