Materials:
- brown and green PET bottles 2 l;
- 1/2 inch pipe;
- steel rod or wire 4 mm.
Palm making process
A pipe is driven into the ground at the location of the palm tree. It will serve as the frame of the trunk. Its height will correspond to the height of the palm tree. Next, the bottom of the brown bottles is cut off and they are cut lengthwise from the cut side.
You need to cut narrow strips 3-4 cm long. Then all of them, or in random order with gaps in several strips, are folded at right angles outward.
Prepared brown bottles without caps are placed on the pipe to the top. If there are not enough of them, you can place a 0.5 liter bottle on top.
Green bottles are used to make palm leaves. The bottom of them is also cut off, then they unfold lengthwise to the shoulders into 3 or 4 parts. The resulting wide strips are cut on the sides to fit the shape of the leaf.
The sheet blanks need to be cut at an angle on the sides to imitate the feathers of a real palm tree. After this, a hole is drilled in the lid of the leaf bottle corresponding to the diameter of the existing rod.
4 arched frames for palm branches are prepared from a rod or wire. Bends are made at one edge of the workpieces. After this, bottles simulating sheets are put on the rods.
Drilled caps are installed between them; this will reduce the consumption of green bottles, the cutting of which takes a lot of time.
The protruding edges of the rods on the workpieces are bent down. The result is hooks that are inserted into the pipe of the palm tree trunk.
To secure the branches, you need to plan a wooden wedge and hammer it into the pipe between the rods. He will wedge them, and they will not go anywhere.
If desired, you can refine the transition between the trunk and branches. To do this, a green bottle is cut into strips and tied to the top of the trunk, but you can do without this. You can also decorate the palm tree with small balls or balls imitating coconuts.
When making a palm tree, it is important to realistically evaluate the available reserves of material, so as not to overdo it with the height of the trunk, the number and length of branches, since a lot of bottles are used. For the palm tree in the example, 14 brown, 40 green bottles and 80 caps were used.
