Logs aren’t just for firewood: They also make rustic accessories, but real logs arrive with unwelcome insects. A large, fake, ornamental log is bug-free, and such an element suits a rustic, woodsy scheme or acts like that one quirky, unanticipated component at a modern home. Place your ornamental log under a glass dining table , on a mantel, bookcase shelf or on the Landscaping service Miami below a window, as though it is a prepared home for forest critters — of this imaginary kind. Rolled, elastic, corrugated-cardboard wrap forms the base for your custom-sized, stylized or natural-looking log.
Roll a span of elastic cardboard into your desirable “log” size. Secure the roll’s span every foot or so with masking tape to keep it from unrolling.
Roll hardened lengths to brief, stocky branch stubs or thin twisty, bent branches, in case you like. Hold the rolls closed using masking tape. Cut one end of each branch or stub in an angle, using a utility knife or handsaw. Affix them to the log, using strips of masking tape all the way around.
Stand the log upright to a worktable.
Brush the cardboard log with drywall primer to prepared or seal the surface for cement. Permit the primer to dry.
Coat the hardened using lightweight, all-purpose, premixed plaster, employing a 4-inch trowel with shallow grooves or teeth. Run the trowel lengthwise down or up the “log” — and branches and stubs — at a slightly irregular fashion, not in straight lines, to form the look of irregular, grooved bark, splits and curled bark.
Paint the log “bark” brownish, using breathable paint created for new plaster and also a 3- or 4-inch paintbrush. If you’re developing a birch log, then use silvery-white paint.
Add dark-gray particulars, including knots, splits and weathering or curled bark, employing a 1/2-inch artist’s paintbrush. Leave the cardboard plaster-free and unpainted on the log’s ends; the color and rolled material resemble wood bands.