Landscaping and Plants Page: 31 |
New books (I have got three new ones this past couple of weeks to help me recover from surgery, ie to keep me in bed) THE DOLLS' HOUSE 1/24 SCALE by Jean Nisbett ISBN 1 86108 113 8 This is a 1/2 scale book and they seem to be rare. THE COMPLETE MINIATURE QUILT BOOK - OVER 24 PROJECTS FOR QUILTERS AND DOLLHOUSE ENTHUSIASTS by Dinah Travis ISBN 0-87341-595-7 (This is a wonderful book for those who like to make the quilts, very clear and good advice). MAKING MINIATURE GARDENS by Freida Gray ISBN 1 86108 058 1. This book has been mentioned and I believe it deserves a second mention, if you need to do a lot of landscaping (and I have been putting off outside scenes for years, i.e. greenhouse, gazebo etc) then this is for you. I started making the kits one flower at a time and they are lovely but expensive time consuming. I realized that I would never get a scene done. So I am going to mix the kits and this book. I got both the garden one and the quilt one from the library before I bought them. I bought all three at Amazon.com. Kathleen in Colorado |
Mini Flowers: I processed fresh Crows Feet(Lycopodium) to make mini X-mas trees. First I dried in Silica Gel, then soaked in a solution of 1 part glycerin to 4 parts rubbing alcohol. I was told to spray the trees once a year with this same recipe. Just spray-painted the tree today as a matter of fact! Hope this helps. Marcy |
Mini Flowers: I processed fresh Crows Feet(Lycopodium) to make mini X-mas trees. First I dried in Silica Gel, then soaked in a solution of 1 part glycerin to 4 parts rubbing alcohol. I was told to spray the trees once a year with this same recipe. Just spray-painted the tree today as a matter of fact! Hope this helps. Marcy |
Treated Boxwood - You can buy it in craft stores that have a lot of the dried flowers and greens. It is a very pretty dark green and is treated so it does not shrivel and fade. It has very small leaves and makes excellent mini plants. |
Papers for Plantmaking - If you plan to leave your flowers to somebody in your will, you'll probably want to look for acid-free papers, as being longer-lasting. If you've an art/graphics supply store nearby, check out what they sell by-the-sheet; sometimes you'll find something usable. Expensive stuff, but one big sheet makes many, many leaves or blossoms. Some older office-supply stores may still have a leftover supply of good-quality onionskin, which is thin, and sometimes has a slight texture. Some papers, when they're dampened, stretch more than others more without tearing, which is nice when you want to cup a one-piece flower as deeply as possible. You can also experiment with crumpling paper and then smoothing it out for painting it, which sometimes adds a bit of pizzazz. Masking tape can be built up to desired thickness with stem wires embedded inside. Buy rolls that are at least 2 inches wide; much easier to work with; and be sure to seal edges with paint so layers don't separate. You know those thin sheets you stick in the dryer with laundry, to prevent static cling? I painted some of this a light, bright green, as close as I could get to a real-life "Fluffy Ruffles" fern I hadn't yet killed. Glued covered wire stems between layers of this, cut out overall fern-leaf shape with scissors, then used craft knife to fringe-cut individual leaflets. There's some sort of abrasive in those dryer sheets; I think it might be supersmall glass beads. You can hear the crunch against your knife blade, and there are tiny "holes" in the finished product that help suggest something more complicated than it really is. Makes a nice companion for the regular Boston Fern. Mary |
Washi paper - There is a web site that has all types of paper washi, oragami papers. http://fascinating-folds.com/ |
Dry Treated Plants: I haven't had a problem with my treated plants drying out. I have had mine for several years now. Maybe spraying them with a fine mist of water every so often would help. Maybe you got a bad batch. I also use baby's breath (the kind with the larger flower that the florists use) and use watered down paint or food coloring to get them different colors (after the baby's breath is dry). I use those for flowers. Linda |
Paper flowers: I have some that were made out of tissue many years ago and they still look good except for a little color fading. The new papers that Mary K and Sandy W are using look wonderful forever. It's what Lady Jane uses in her wonderful glass room boxes, and anyone that has ever met Linda knows, she will only put the best in her pieces, because that is what they deserve. Mary Kinloch has a new web page on her flowers, check it out, she does some wonderful pieces http://www.marykinloch.com Jan |
"Crows feet" is the common name of a plant. It is also call "Lycopodium" – any of a genus of plants, the club mosses, erect or creeping, with evergreen leaves. (Webster.) Marcy |
Paint for plants: The process originated with our wonderful Joann Swanson, I just adapted it for my purposes. You can use the same technique to make flowers. Just shape the thin "petals" around tiny beads. I've made some fairly decent roses and other blooms which, I decided, needed no specific identification. I am not in the same league as those talented folks who make such incredibly realistic blossoms with paper and silk. Most of my gardens are never-were blooms on none-such plants. Wanna |
Making of thin petals etc.: Has anyone tried using Teflon instead of glass? Like one of those fry pans that got steel-wooled by mistake by a husband like me VBG. Bob |
Plants: Try looking at plant-and-seed catalogs for drawings of sample gardens - not much detail, just colorful overall impressions - some tall spikey plants in the back. Some low fluffy-looking things in front, etc. And then instead of making yourself crazy trying to replicate the details of gladioli or whatever is pictured,just go for the same general effect using the materials, ideas, and skills you have on hand. The more you play with this stuff the closer you can get to "real" plants. If anybody's browsing seed catalogs with real-life gardening in mind, take a look at feverfew. It's one of the chrysanthemum families, with lacy vivid green leaves and many very small white daisy-type flowers. Grows easily, makes wonderful nosegays, self-sows but pulls up easily. Let it go to seed and the dried calyxes look like short-petalled daisies with big black centers. Mediocre - but turn them over and they look like densely petalled blossoms, ready-to-paint. Mary |
Lavender: Take a 1 or 1-1/2 inch Styrofoam ball, and cut a slice of about one third of it off, and paint the curved part of the slice's surface dark green. Coat the surface with glue, and take some dark green shredded railroad foam and sprinkle the foam all over the surface. If you have a bamboo skewer handy very carefully split it. You are aiming for thin slivers.... Cut the slivers into pieces about 1 - 1-1/2 inch long, and paint them dark green to match the foam. On one end, coat it with glue, and sprinkle on some medium railroad ballast, and when it's dry, paint the ballast lavender color. Trim so they're random lengths. Stick the dried stems into the foam covered ball, kind of bunching them together in the top middle of the ball. Karen Isaacson |
Lilacs: You will need bunka in dark purple, medium purple, light purple, white or any other colors that fall in the lilac color family. Unravel about 6 inches of each color bunka, and snip each strand into little bits (about 1/8 inch long or less). Mix some of the dark purple and a little of each the other purples you have, and do the same for each of the other colors. Lilacs aren't all one color; you'll find shades of purple... Make some long cones of Fimo, and use some florist's green wire as stems in the wide end of the cones. Bake according to the package directions, and paint dark green when cooled (you can daub some purple on them too if you want). Coat a cone with glue, and sprinkle the bunka mix over the cone, patting the bunka bits in here and there. If you miss a spot, you can go back later and put more on... Fill a pot with self-drying clay, and 'plant' your stems. Cut some florist's tape into leaves and put the stems in the clay. Daub some glue on the surface of the clay when it's dry, and sprinkle on some railroad ballast or dried coffee grounds (you want to simulate dirt), and you have lilacs. You can also put the stems in a vase with some other flowers as well. Karen Isaacson |
Ornamental Cabbage: Pour separate small amounts of purple (or mix your own), pale green and cream acrylic craft paint into a shallow container. To each color add a bit of water, enough to thin it but not be too runny. Put very thin little splotches on a piece of glass or ceramic tile and let dry. Using your knife, gently lift the paint from the glass, stretching, ruffling and curling it as you do. Starting with the cream, then the green, then the purple, cover, then layer the dried paint around a small bead, continuing to pull and fiddle with the edges til they are very ruffly. Some were just darker to lighter in each shade. Cabbages going to seed get taller and more spindly, so you might experiment making some spikier. I also tried using curled bunka, but the colors were not as realistic as the paint which I could thin and mix. Wanna |
Ponds: Start with a large jar lid, preferably one with smooth sides and as large as you can get. Paint the insides dirty brown and green. Make the middle darker and don't make the colors even... When it's dry, fill with resin. If you want to set the pond flush with the ground, cut a hole in your surface the diameter of the lid, and glue it in. If you want to have an above ground pond, cover the sides of the lid with bricks cut to the height of the pond side. Put cut side down (to hide the cut), after you paint the outside of the lid with dark brown or black paint. They won't cover all around, but get them close together and straight up and down, and you can get some colored grout (like for tile) and carefully fill in between, then glue bricks around the top edge, in a starburst pattern. You can also use rocks, like slate, but they're not as even as the bricks, unless you have some of that stuff used for rocks from Department 56 that you can paint up. If you glued the pond flush with the ground, then take some slate pieces or some fairly flat rocks and glue them around the top edge, overlapping the "water" a bit, and make them irregular, like in nature. Glue some tiny bits of moss (the stuff that's like lotus vine, pulled apart into little bits, and the other stuff that looks like underwater plants) around here and there. If you then take some green Fimo and make a rough, broad heart shape about 1-2" wide, with leaf markings, you have a water lily leaf; then take one of those dyed straw flowers, and glue it on the surface of the water along with the leaf and you have a water lily... Take thin slivers of bamboo (take a chopstick and cut 2, 2-1/2 and 3" pieces) and dye them in some tea (just soak) or use a brownish wash with a bit of green. When dry, coat one end (but not out to the very tip) with glue, and sprinkle on some HO railroad ballast in dark brown into the glue. Now you have some cattails. Mix lengths, and glue them in groups around your pond. Take some large pine needles (the kind that are about 2 or more inches in length) and dry them out. When they're dry, paint them with dark green paint, and cut the pointed ends off about 1 -1/2 in length, and glue them in clumps around the edge of your pond. Now you have reeds. Karen Isaacson |
Landscaping: In small areas, I've used Italian Cypress trees. They give any Victorian house an elegant look. I made mine with chopsticks that were covered with glue and then, after gluing, dipped them in green shredded foam. Also use this method to make flowers, line the sidewalk to the house, make low foundation shrubs, grass, or perhaps surround a garden statue or birdbath. Connie |
Strawberry pots: In real life, I use my strawberry pots for growing herbs. You might want to put one on a kitchen windowsill or by a kitchen door so your mini chef can snip some fresh herbs. Tracey |
Rocks: I read with interest your ideas to make flagstone with the Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty. I have used that material to make imitation "rocks" for some of my woodcarving projects where weight might be a problem. For those who don't know about this product, it is an inexpensive material to use and can be found in hardware stores. It comes in a powder form and is sold in a round cardboard can. When it is moistened, it can be shaped somewhat and when it dries, it dries HARD and lightweight. I think it would work to make flagstones and such, you might have to experiment with it a bit. Bonnie Gibson |
Mulch: Here is the secret to make sawdust useable. Fill a 1 gallon ziplock bag 1/2 full then add about 1/2 cup stain (I use water based) and squish and squash it around. When throughly mixed pour on counter to dry completely. The stain makes it look real-I don't know why- I use it for sawdust floors for my woodland creations, and mulch in landscaping projects. THE BUG |
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