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Crafts & Decorations

What crafts can I use peeling tree bark for?

11 years ago

I have a large tree that is slowly dying, and is sheding it's bark. The bark is beautiful, and the inside has details from worms, or the such, crawling up. I hate to jus throw this into the burn pile....some of the pieces are 2 ft by 8 inches. And again, very pretty. I believe to tree to be a birch of somekind. Thanks for your ideas!

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Comments (6)

party_music50
11 years ago
If it's birch and still in "good shape" (i.e., not crumbling), you could try to make bark pouches, also known as bark baskets. I've seen on-line tutorials for doing it, possibly at basketmakers.org, but I cannot say for certain.

I think it would be pretty to make bark-wrapped candles... either cut the bark to fit an existing pillar candle, or tie the bark to become a pourable candle mold.

Can you think of a way to embellish the bark to use it as a seasonal hanging decoration? Maybe take a pretty piece of bark and attach greenery, fake berries, fake bird,... then drill holes at opposite ends of the bark and wire it for hanging on your door? :)
minnie_tx
11 years ago
We used mallaluca (spelling) bark to cover the outside of picture frames years ago it turned out to be very nice
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Does this tree have any leaves on it? If it does, what is the condition of the leaves? Generally, peeling bark is a bad sign. If the bark can be easily peeled away from the entire circumference of the trunk, the tree is most likely dead and can be cut down. In fact, one way to deliberately kill a tree is to "girdle", or remove, the bark from around the trunk. I recently had a mulberry tree I wanted to get rid of, so I tried an experiment with it. I progressively stripped away the bark from around the trunk. To my surprise, though, this tree kept living in spite of the fact that I removed all the bark around the trunk except for one-half inch! That was enough to transport enough nutrients to keep the tree alive. When I finally cut this last half-inch inch, the tree died.
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looks like a lightening strike ... no clue as to the health of the remainder of the tree based on these pix the green stuff is lichens .. ignore ken
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I wouldn't cut the whole thing off at once. I also wouldn't have cut that large branch out of the center, resulting in a conspicuous pruning wound in the middle of everything, or done anything else to "arborize" (make tree-like) a cane-stemmed type of shrub such as this one. Unlike kinds like hollies and rhododendrons shrubs of this nature often do not make long-persistent individual stems of a permanent and solid nature that always last the entire life of the specimen in the manner of true trees. When a cane-producing shrub is pruned and trained to have everything coming off a single main stem the entire specimen may be lost if and when this one cane ages and deteriorates - well before a stem of a tree or tree-like shrub would have.
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laurastheme
11 years ago
Take this to the garden junk forum. They're full of ideas.
posieh
11 years ago
Hi....hope this helps. Since the bark usually wants to curl I've seen them take used cans of various sizes, tomatoe juice or canned corn, etc. or old glass bottles or vases and covered the outside with bark and used them for dried flowers. Kinda Nature like. Some added a few small rocks around the bottom for added weight. I've also seen them cover bird houses with the bark. Good Luck!
bulldinkie
11 years ago
Cover picture frames,youll have them along time,I have a paper birch,I looked at it the other day Im gonna make hubby a nice picture frame for his big game hunt pictures.
Janel-M
11 years ago
For small pieces, coat with mod podge or another sealer of your choice, drill a hole in the top and use as pendants for necklaces.

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