building the far away tree in 1/12th scale

A few months ago, i made a 1/12 scale dolls house that I made to look like a hollowed out tree stump. This attracted lots of interest and one particular message that I received went something along these lines; " I really like your house and was wondering, could you make it bigger, in fact could you make me the faraway tree."
My first thoughts, what's a faraway tree? I messaged the enquirer back and them started searching Google!
For those who don't know the faraway tree is from a book by Enid Blighton which tells of the adventures of three children who discover a magical enormous tree when they move to the country. It is pure fairytale with pixies and fairies and other interesting characters who all live in the tree. After much messaging back and forth I had the commission and what a commission!! Its fair to say that I never expected such an exciting project! Anyway I am going to blog about its construction here. Just to be clear from the outset this is an interpretation of the tree and will have extras that are not in the story and omissions where necessary.

The first step.

It all begins with a drawing or rather, a set of sketches and ideas. Unlike a house which is easy to plan, the tree is an organic structure and as such a strict plan would take far to much time to draw out. So I drew up some sketches to help convey the idea to the client, then from here I will carry out the basic construction using plywood to get the "bones" of the tree. I then will use a mixture of materials and media to create the tree and breathe life into it.

 I made many sketches and had scraps of paper all other place with scribblings and thoughts about construction, etc. Here are a couple just to show some of those thoughts.