Topiaries: I was thinking that Model Magic would be a good medium to sculpt (or would that be mold) the unusual evergreen shapes and topiaries. I just have it in white, but I believe it's sold in green too. After you achieve the shape you want, you could glue the green landscaping flocking on, insert a stem before it dries, (although it still remains pretty flexible after drying,)and stick it into a pot or your landscaping scene. I'm mostly thinking of those really weirdly pruned evergreens you sometimes see.

Cheryl Loaring

Dirt: After all this discussion about what to use for dirt, I am beginning to wonder if I am the only person that uses dirt for dirt. I bake it in the oven for about 1 hour at 250 degrees to kill any unwanted pests. I store it in a zip lock bag and when I want to use it, I cut a small hole in the corner of the bag and the dirt flows out in a fairly neat fashion. Once it is glued in place, I give it a light coat of clear matte spray. It will darken the dirt slightly, but at least it doesn't flake off.

Briar P

Poppies / Anemones / Chrysanthemums: I just used poppy seeds as the centers in some crepe paper poppies and anemones. Made a tiny loop at the end of a wire, hole-punched a bunch of petals, tacky-glued them around the loop, and filled in the loop with a tacky glue blob and sprinkled seeds on. Quick and simple but they look pretty good. Diff between poppies and anemones is mainly color and stem height; my mini anemones are purple. (The big flowers modeled for their minis.)

Freida Gray's Mini Gardening Book has instructions for chrysanthemums; haven't tried yet but will since it sounds fairly simple. For each flower, you need embroidery floss, 4" of covered wire and a round paintbrush handle about 1/4" diameter. Lay the wire alongside the handle and wrap the floss around and around the handle and wire (as if making a mini pompom) about 2/3 of the way down the wire. When the pom looks full enough, clip the end of the floss and wrap the short end of the wire very tightly down the longer wire, slide off the handle and clip the thread loops to make the poofy petals. She suggests rolling the petals around a round toothpick and setting them with clear spray acrylic to make different mum shapes -- could probably use hair spray in a pinch -- and says for variations you can wrap the short end of the wire up over the bottom part of the pom to make carnations, or flatten the pom and paint a yellow center to make asters. Photos looked very real.

Loretta

Heart Punch Flowers: I recently tried my hand at some flowers punched from a teeny tiny heart. I punched out white paper and used a watercolor marker to make a rusty spot in the V of the heart. Using my embossing tool, I curled the edges making the heart curl and glued 4 of these petals on a stem. You can use another marker to color the center when dry and voila! dogwood bloom. The heart punched in green makes the leaves.

Alberta

Indoor/Outdoor Grass Carpeting: I used it in a garage sale project that we did for State Day two years ago. I used Instant Grrrrrip on the plywood base to glue the grass on. Then I sprinkled sterile potting soil on and then sprayed it well with water in a mister. It worked well for such an informal project. It definitely is "broadleaf."

Donna Hutchinson

Heart Punches: There are heart punches available from several mail order sources and they are also often found at places like WalMarts, Office Depot, etc

Pat

Heart-Shaped Flowers w/Prominent Stamen:

Here's some, anthurium - it has a single big lumpy flat heart-shaped bract (petal/leaf) and a prominent stamen. It is so dramatic looking, it almost looks plastic. Usually red but can be white or orange. I bought two yesterday - EXTREMELY stunning looking in a dark dark red, almost burgundy, almost brown. My two have bracts 5.5-6 inches long, 4-4.5 inches wide and the long thing is 2.5-3.25 inches long. It is located about a third of the way up the petal thing at the vee of the heart.

Peace Lily -An indoor plant which has white flowers, similar in shape - heart shaped bract but more pointed, and curved round the center not flat, and not with the obvious vee - more obviously a modified leaf and a prominent long thing which is a little separated from the bract by a sort green stem.

Arum lily (or calla lily) - This is the classic white funeral lily, but also comes in all sorts of colors. It has a heart shaped petal but the petal is rolled into a cone.

Sandra Monk

Meadow Grass: They have taken fake fur, added a bit of coloring and used it to make un-mown grass. Rough it up a bit so that it isn't laying smoothly and you have wonderfully realistic meadow grass. You can just make it out in the lower picture featuring the dovecote. I believe that they used a light tan or beige fur and added touches of green to add dimension.

Lisa

Heart Punches: You can purchase heart shaped punches at the stationery store.

June Simpson

Flowers: Anthurium plants are heart shaped,waxy looking flowers that you see frequently in arrangements. I paint the flower with a gloss gel medium, laying the gel on thick and lumpy......sounds terrible but it give you the look of the natural veining in the plant. I tried many different things for the stamen and found the thing that works the best for me is a caraway seed.

It is curved but can be difficult to pick up with tweezers. First glue the caraway seed on a heart shape using white glue then zap-a-gap. Let dry. Paint the caraway seed with a mixture of matte gel medium and ivory acrylic paint. Let dry. Then paint flower with a mixture of gel medium (dries glossy) mixed with a good red acrylic paint. I usually mix paint and gels in small paint saver containers-75% gel and 25% paint and label them. I have many that I forget to label and when I use them again, they usually end up unpleasant surprises! I have an anthurium plant in my yard (not the red one...can't find). Anyway the leaves are very smooth and shiney large heart shapes. I hand cut the leaves from stiffened silk, glue the leaves to a wire, place them in floral foam and spray them with glaze spray. I add veins to the leaves using the back of an xacto knife.

Mary Kinloch

Flowers: I made some flowering plants using yellow quilting thread, tying a knot and then threading the flower part over the thread, made a string of these and then used a felt tipped pen to make the stem and phony calyx green. Snipped the thread and applied to the end of the wire. It works really well and you might try this for your bleeding hearts - using the thread to attach them to the wire or stiffening the thread for the stem.

Charlean

Lightweight Landscape: Use a Styrofoam base. For hills, use smaller chunks of Styrofoam or wads of newspaper. Cover the hills with Plaster Cloth. (Call 1-800-234-9995 if you don't have a model railroad store in your area). It's very easy to use; cut a strip of Plaster Cloth, dip it in water, and lay it on your base. Smooth it with a wet finger. After it dries, you can spray it with adhesive and sprinkle Woodland Scenics (also available at the same places as Plaster Cloth) over it. You want the 'fine' texture for grass; the coarse texture makes great shrubs. Just grab a clump and place it where you want a shrub. Looks great next to the house!!

Allen

Creating Hills: You can use blue insulation board that is available from home building centers such as Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. It is easy to cut and bevel with a knife. Several layers will create all the hills you might want.

Sue

Bunka Flowers: Actually, it's not so much a pattern you need, as a general shape. The first example I ever saw (don't remember whose) was a string of unraveled bunka wrapped several times around a thin cone of sculpey, for a lilac. A hyacinth was made by wrapping several layers directly around the stem wire; a chrysanthemum-type by shaping and gluing a disc onto the stem. (For this last, I think it's easiest to punch or cut a round of green paper, cup it slightly, then coil and glue the bunka onto that, hiding the green.

You might prefer working with bunka that you've stiffened first (this gets rid of some of the rayon shine, too). Stick a couple of bamboo skewers a few inches apart in a block of styrofoam, fix a piece of double-face tape down the length of each, and string unraveled bunka loosely between the two. Then spray several coats of acrylic matte medium. Cut into short lengths to glue crosswise on a stem (the way wood hyacinths grow). Or into crispy snippets that you might - for example - sprinkle onto a glue-covered disc or dip a glue-covered stem into. Something I've been musing about: for lilacs, wisteria, etc., might one get an airier effect by wrapping a bit of green bunka onto a stem, then piling colored on top of that? You can work with more than one color. You can also add color with permanent felt-tips, etc.

Mary (Oregon)

Babys Breath: A small white flower that usually grows in big bushes along roadsides. Well at least they do here in Southern Idaho. Here they are ready to pick around middle of June or early July. I have used these a lot. You can bring them home and leave to rest, not dry, for a day or so. Then spray paint them any color you want.. They hold up beautifully. I have some that are 6 years old in my mini planters and they still look like the day I put them in.

Winnie

Bedding: I use sheets of floral foam as a base for gardening (from Old Time Pottery). Not expensive, easy to sculpt contours, even with a dull knife. To protect the underside and edges from dents, tacky-glue on a layer of poster board onto which you can apply rock pattern paper (run a fence or pebble edging along the perimeter to cover). Very light, and easy to "plant" -- just stick plants directly into it.

Loretta

Plaster cloth for landscaping: If you can't find plaster cloth, sometimes marketed as Rigid Wrap, also as landscape cloth, you can make your own... messy but it works. Mix up a goodly batch of plaster of Paris to the consistency of cream. Dip in some loose weave fabric such as cheese cloth, very light weight cottons, etc. Squish it out and apply. I usually add a good dollop of Weldbond glue or Elmer's glue to the water before adding the plaster for a bit of extra strength but most don't bother... much less expensive and generally stronger than regular plaster cloth. You can also use slightly watered Elmer's Glue (not school glue) and fabric and it will do a wonderful job. If you can get the book "A Simple Screamer" you can see some wild and wonderful pictures done with glue and fabric mache as they call it. Sorry, don't have the author's name as my book is out on loan at the moment.

Sammy

Landscaping Materials: Recently I was faced with a dilemma while trying to complete landscaping on my log cabin project. I needed A LOT of pine or spruce trees to dot the landscape and surround the waterfall and stream beside the cabin and I needed them to be cheap and I needed them NOW. I went digging in my craft closet and found some Lemax snow flocked evergreen trees I purchased after Christmas which I was planning to decorate as Christmas trees for my dollhouses for next year. Since they were so inexpensive, I decided to try my hand at spray painting them a spruce green color, and much to my surprise, they turned out fantastic! They looked so great that I decided I needed many more than I had on hand so I located the Lemax website and purchased more trees from it. If you need trees, you might want to check it out: <A HREF="http://www.collectorsite.com/lemax/index.html">LemaxHome</A>

I combined the evergreen trees with fall aspen trees from Art Smith Productions (Landscape Magic) and my project is beautiful! I've also located another source for great trees although on a smaller scale for model railroaders:

http://www.modelrailroadshopper.com/general/scenery_ads.html

These are a couple of reliable and unusual sources for landscaping materials.

Kathy in TX

Stone Enclosures: When making a stone wall or enclosure of small stones for a pond, there are spaces between the small stones that are being glued one on top of the other to make the wall for "water" containment or a stone fence etc. I filled in these spaces after the glue dried; with air curing clay. Materials; air drying clay, cup of water, a "pusher" like a nail with a small head. You hold the shank and push the clay with the head of a paint brush, perhaps 1/4" wide. Procedure;

Take a small piece of clay that will be able to fit into the opening you wish to fill. Wet it with water from the paint brush. Gently push it into the opening. Use the "pusher" to tamp it into place a bit more securely. Now, wet the brush and just wipe the clay and spread it as you brush it with the wet brush. Blend the clay into the crevices with the wet paint brush. Hides the holes and the glue and looks good.

Bob in Hollywood, FL

Lawn Sprinkler: I'd start by making the base from a bit of green aluminum can. Do you drink Mountain Dew? Use tin snips or VERY old scissors (your mom will cut you out of her will if you get into the sewing box!) to cut a piece of metal the appropriate size from the can. The base isn't solid, but I think I'd paint the 'holes' black, rather than trying to cut them out. When it's dry, use a fine nail to poke a hole in the center for the 'spinner', and round the base by pressing it around a film container or large pill bottle.

Maybe a bit of wire coat hanger, bent to shape with pliers for the spinner part? A length of fine wire, wrapped around the spinner, threaded thru a small bead and then fastened off on the underside of the base ought to do the trick, and with a flick of your finger, I think it would actually whirl around. If you want a connector on the side, then glue on a larger brass colored bead - might be a good idea, if you can do it, to include a little tab on the center of one side, and after you have rounded the base, fold the tab down so you'll have a place to glue the bead.

Dani