More Flowers

As the rest of the world-- literally-- feels a certain restlessness, I, too, am out of sorts. Out of my routine. I should be gardening. I should have spent the day with my husband touring our favorite nurseries and garden centers shopping for gardening supplies and spending too much money on new spring plants, but I couldn't do that--not today. Maybe next week.

Here, the Stay-at-Home has morphed into to Stay-at-Home-and-be-Safe. Now we can travel as far as ten miles to do only necessary shopping. For us, ten miles gets us out of town, but not even close to the grocery, the only store that we have been visiting for curb-side pick-up.

I suppose it has been the same for you. We are in this together.

Instead then, I did garden, only in miniature,  making two projects that have been on my To-Do list for awhile.

First, a rose trellis for the Bellingham.

I made a rose trellis for the Blue Farmhouse now Pink, using this strawberry wreath that I picked up years ago at a thrift store just so that I could use the vines. Should you not be able to find such a bargain, you can find covered floral wire that these two projects require at Paper Mart. Click here for the link. This vine was already curvy and viny and worked very well.

In my stash I had these roses, but you might want to make your own. For me the pre-made roses made the project go much faster. They come with half inch stem that I clipped off so that at the rose would lay flat against the vine or the trellis.

The wooden trellis is easy enough to make. Using wood scraps in my stash, I copied a trellis that came with one of the houses that I bought. Next I clipped pieces of vine and removed the strawberry leaves that were too big and out of scale for the 1:12 roses. 

I hot glued the vine to the trellis then hot glued the roses to the vine.

I punched out plenty of leaves, using my newly ordered three petal leaf punch that to me looked like a rose leaf. Dipping the end to the leaf stem in tacky glue,  I attached the leaves to each rose, hoping that they looked natural.

I may add more roses when I can go shop for them and I need to build a container for the trellis. 

And what's that potted plant next to the rose, you ask? 

To begin, I searched for hydrangea tutorials and came with an ABC video where I learned a basic technique that I modified by necessity to use supplies that I have here at home. This wasn't my first attempt.

According to the video, the materials were simple. The process was easy. Bend florist wire to make a tight hook; cut a narrow length of toilet paper--really? TP? In better times TP might be readily available, but short or rationing out the TP--anyway, handy on my work bench was a box of facial tissue. I'll spare you the rest of the gory details. Let's just say this process didn't work for me. 

While my first attempt at fashioning a hydrangea didn't turn out so well, I did learn how to approach the project. The TP was used to form a ball on the end of the florist wire that would be the platform to support the petals, so I substituted. What I really needed was a small styrofoam ball; lacking that, I substituted round wooden balls. Beads might work, too.  Here are my supplies:

• two punches: one for the petals and one for the leaves
• 22 gage florist wire
• Florist tape to wrap the around the wire stem; a better option would be to order the cloth or paper cover florist wire.
• craft balls of some sort: wood, ceramic, glass, styrofoam, toilet paper,
• Tacky glue and pliers, 
• tweezers to pick up the tiny petals. 
• stylus to shape the petals

I cut ample stems, twisted a loop at one end

wrapped the stem with florist tape--sticky stuff; hard to work with but it gives the stem body and something for the glue to grip.

I bent the loop to form a flat platform for the wooden ball to sit on.

and let the glue dry.  While the glue dried, I used card stock to punch out the petals and then shaped them with the stylus. I've used my mousepad, but here I am using on of the rubber jar lid grips that works better than my mousepad. 

When the glue set, I began to add the petals. I cut three shades of lavender and began with one on the top then tried to add more petals in rows. I dipped the back side of the petal in the glue and pushed it close to the petals next to an above it, trying not to have any gaps between the petals.

One mistake that I didn't realize at first was using card stock that has a white core, so while the paper is colored on both sides, it has a white core, making the edges of the leaves white. I'll take a marker to color the edges of the leaves.

I placed 4 or 5 leaves around the bottom of the blossom then added 4 more down the stem. I used all three shades of lavender, add the darkest shade at the bottom. The one in the pot was my first one.

I am new at flower making, but it is fun to see if I can recreate my favorite garden flowers. I would love to be able grow the real thing, but until I can figure out how grown hydrangeas in the garden, I'll enjoy the ones that I can make.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed these two pretty easy little projects.