Mary, Mary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

 The weather continues to be cold, really cold with snow and freezing temperatures. As February ends and March arrives, our minds here at the Garden Spot turn toward the garden. With 5 acres to tend, there's a lot to think about. While we wait for good weather, my husband has been planning the vegetable garden, sorting old seed packs, buying new ones, and creating a planting plan. I've been gardening of sorts too--the mini kind. I'm designing gardens for two big farm houses, the Bellingham Farmhouse and the Manchester Country Home, and that's a lot of plant material.

I've been ordering plant kits for some time, so I have pretty good inventory, but I need a lot of plant material and kits are expensive, so I've been making plants from scratch. 

I first wrote about my flower making projects in May 2019 inspired by bloggers who taught me so much: "Stepping out of My Comfort Zone: Making Flowers". I began developing my flower making skills by learning how to assemble the flowers from kits and then by looking for tutorials online to learn how to make my own. These bloggers have such good tutorials:

• Jodi at My Miniature Madness has a great tutorial on making geraniums and inspired my idea to make my own beads.  
• Elizabeth at Studio Miniatures creates a beautiful basked of geraniums, showing each step. 
• Dollhouse Miniature Furniture Tutorials 1 inch minis has another wonderful tutorial, too.
• Youtube tutorials:
• Farm 2 Market   has a great 3 part series on how to make miniature hydrangeas

These are my favorite vendors for flower kits:

• SKD Miniatures https://sdkminiatures.co
• Dragon Fly International located in California
• Two Etsy Shops that have wonderful kits and great service:
• The Miniature Garden, who ships from England
• MoonFlower Mini Garden, who ships from Estonia
•  Mary Kinloch sells her laser cut flower kits on eBay and has a Facebook page Making Dollhouse Flowers in All Scales. I use her kits, and while they are probably the best priced and offer a generous amount of plants, they don't come with  instructions. She also has YouTube tutorials. 

I've been ordering new punches, too, so that I can fashion my own miniature flowers. You can find punches on AMAZON and Ebay, but I order mine from The Punch Bunch on Etsy. 

I've making geraniums and hydrangeas this week. They are made pretty much same way and I've posted about both of them before, so I won't repeat the geranium tutorial; you can see that tutorial in this post: Crafting with Granny and More Flowers shows how a I made hydrangea then, but I've changed how I make them. 

But before I begin, a word about which is the best: buying flower kits or making flowers from scratch.

Buying flower kits would be the best option if you want just a couple of house plants or simple flower arrangements or if you don't want to invest in the punches.

If, however, you have a big project that requires a lot of flowers, such as an entire garden, investing in some simple tools will be money well spent, for you will be using  the same punches for many different flowers. I've been ordering a couple of punches every now and then as I decide which flowers I want to add to my mini garden. They average just under $5. each with shipping added. 

Both the geranium and hydrangea need a foundation. You can use any number of items to create a flower head: beads, paper fashioned flower heads--one tutorial uses toilet paper--, or as I do, making my own flower head foundations with oven bake polymer clay. Farm 2 Market YouTube tutorial uses paper clay to make flower head beads. Air dry clay would also work. I just use what I have on hand. For this project, I used wooden beads that make very large mop-head type hydrangea and my clay beads to make smaller heads.

I have two different ball stylus, giving me four sizes to work the flowers. I use two types of wire, one paper covered, one not. I find that the paper covered wire doesn't penetrate the styrofoam that I use in pots and planters, so I poke holes to insert the flower stem. 

I use jewelers pliers to twist a platform for the bead to sit on. I paint the beads first, except when I forget. 

I like making my own beads because I can adjust the size. Farm 2 Market makes hers about 5-6 mm, but I think that is really small. 7 mm, even 8-10 would be okay. The geranium beads have to small.

What kind of paper works best for flowers? You can order special papers from Amazon and from some specialized craft shops, but I use card stock, colored and white typing paper, and my new favorite, white coffee filters. If you use scrapbook card stock, you don't have to paint it, but some complain that card stock doesn't hold the shape you create using the ball stylus. The colored typing paper works well and comes in a variety pack: light blue, pink, yellow, and maybe lavender, but you get far more paper than what you will ever need and you don't have the variety of colors. I have even considered those sticky note pads with a variety of colors. Still they are limited in colors. I have new favorite: white coffee filter.

The coffee filter accepts paint well; it doesn't fall apart when it gets wet,  dries quickly, and you have the flexibility to mix your acrylic paints to the shade and hues that want. I even mixed some old water color pastes to get a light shade of blue. The acrylic paints can be mixed and thinned with water so that you get just the color that you want. You do need to mix plenty because is you run out, you will have a hard time getting the same color the next time you try to blend paints. 

 So as a beginner, you start with what you have on hand and experiment to decide what works best for you.

One hydrangea requires a lot of little flowers. I found that I needed an entire one side a filter. I don't worry too much about getting the paint shade even because the flower head is made up of individual little blossoms will vary in shade. Some lighter; some darker.

I use the smaller ball to shape the blossom, rubbing it in a circular motion on a piece of craft foam.

Next I use a toothpick to spread tacky glue on the bottom of the bead that has been glued to the wire foundation then blossom by blossom I attach each one as closely to each other to close the gaps. You will note that I didn't paint this wooden bead, so I made sure to jam those little blooms as closely together as possible, working row by row.

Here is a finished flower. I love the color. It is a larger head. I made 3 for a large pot. For some reason I didn't photograph the leaves. Punch 4 leaves and glue them to the stem beneath the flower heat so that they are positioned around the bottom of flower.

To fill in the gaps, I glued some leaves to wire stems without the blossoms to make a fuller planter.

Hydrangeas come in so many beautiful colors. Do a web search to help you decide on color and how you want to design your plant.

Containers

You can source pots from a variety of places. These wooden ones I find at Hobby Lobby. The first one comes in a smaller size, too. They are perfect for the miniature garden and can be painted whatever color you want.

I love the authentic red clay pots, but the mini ones are getting hard to find, being replaced with resin or plastic pots. Cinderella Moments has a great tutorial on these little plastic pots on how to customize them and make them look used and vintage. The large pot and the bowl pot came from Molly Sue Miniatures. I love her things. She ships from Isle of Man, UK.

I've had these for a while. I think I picked them up at a show.

I used caladium leaves to fill in around the geraniums. Creating them will be the next tutorial.

 I love this cobalt blue pot. I don't have one in the real garden, maybe this year.

Not bad a couple of afternoons--well evenings, too.

The geraniums are assembled the same way. I use the smallest blossom on the punch. You can actually use the same punch for both flowers.

 I've discovered that by moving the paper to the make next punch instead of moving the punch along the paper, the little flowers stake up, making it easy to sort and store. I save the sauce containers from McDonald's to store my extra flower pieces.

I use these punches to make cascading flowers that flow out of pots. I attach the tiny leaves to the floral wire and then add the flowers.

Whether you decide to use punches to create your own flowers or to buy kits, flower making can be quite satisfying. I follow Facebook group that offers such good good inspiration and  tips  how to make flowers. I've learned by searching Youtube and Pinterest for tutorials. 

Some of my flowers aren't really botanically accurate, but I think we can feel free to create what we want, what we like, what works for us. 

In another month I hope to be out in the real garden. I usually start my gardening mid-March during my spring break at the university. Until then, I'll be working on the gardens for the dollhouse. Hydrangeas are such a favorite, but I just haven't had success in our climate, though they do grow here. I'm hoping that the one plant last year survives the winter, but the mini hydrangea will thrive in the little gardens. Until I can get my hands in the garden soil, I'll be making more mini flowers to fill my little gardens.

And how does your garden grow?

Thanks for visiting. 

On a final note, I follow Sweet Mini Dollhouse by a very talented and gifted artist on Instagram who posts wonderful short tutorials using polymer clay to fashion a variety of minis and she has an Etsy store. She lives the Ukraine. My heart breaks for her and her country. She's posting about what she and her family are going through, which makes this horrible war real and personal. There's not much you and I can do, except to pray for Ukrainians. 

Gone Fishing

 Long ago at our old house we installed a water feature, a small hand dug 3 ft. deep pond that brought so much pleasure. We stocked it with half a dozen feeder gold fish that came from the pet store. My young neighbor had grown tired of his 3 fantail gold fish, so he brought them to live with us. Those nine fish became the foundation for our fish colony. We still enjoy watching the offspring those original fish.When we moved here, I insisted on a new water feature. The Head Gardener rented a machine to dig the hole, which ended up being much larger than I had planned. Beware the man with a digging machine. Our gold fish and water lilies lived for a long time in a horse tank. In the winter we moved the fish into the garage. Neighbors moved and gave us their 3 koi. We lost one the first winter, but the other two thrived and grew from a few inches in size to more than a foot. They were both white and mixed with the the gold fish, so we now have a variety of gold fish and gold fish crossed with koi. Two years ago a blue heron killed the smaller one and last winter we lost our Big Boy. We replaced them with 3 small koi late last summer so we will see how or if they survived this winter. 

The dollhouse project then needs a koi pond. I have made some flowers for the Bellingham Farmhouse garden, the hen house is complete; now I will begin making the water feature. This week I  practiced making water lilies and koi. Here are my results.

I began the water lily by looking at my photos last summer's water flowers. I have several water lilies and a lotus We finally realized that the big clump of plant in the middle of the pond was a lotus. Four or five years ago I purchased a lotus tuber at the Denver Botanical Gardens plant sale. We potted it and put in the bottom of the pond.  I never could figure out if it actually grew, but this summer I realized that there was something different about one lily. It stood taller, had greener, bigger leaves leaves, and giant blossoms. My horticulturalist daughter said that it was a lotus. As I look back at photos of past summers, in 2019 the lotus had bloomed, taking over the center of the pond and last summer it had doubled in size. 

I have regular water lilies, too: white, pink, and yellow

The photo show distinct differences between the two flowers. The yellow one in the front sits above the water on longer stem and is larger. The back flower, the lily, originally came from Texas where my father collected it, and I brought tubers from his pond. It thrives in our small environment. I also have a pink lily and yellow lily. 

I began by punching out the pieces, using the geranium leaf punch for the leaves, the bellflower punch for the leaves, the snowflake sort of punch for the stamen, and paper covered floral wire.

The project requires simple tools that you already have in your tool box:

Using a ball stylus, I shaped the pieces to cup the blossoms and to give the leaves dimension. The clamp tweezers certainly help to help to to hold stem in place as you glue the layers in place. The pliers are jewelry pliers, and the ball stylus tools are found the quilling section at the craft store or the with the clays. It's nice to have different sizes for different shapes. Use tacky glue to adhere the pieces. I used computer paper for the petal and card stock for the stamen and leaves.

 

With the pieces shaped, I stacked them: 4 white petals, off setting and staggering the petals, using a dab of tacky glue between each layer.

Using the pliers I bent a circle at the end of the wire to form a platform for the blossom then about an inch below bent the wire in an L shape. The lotus blossom stands several inches above the surface of the water while the water lily sit on the water surface. Mine intermingle and that  is the best way to tell the difference between the two.

And there you have it, a simple water lotus and water lily. While not botanically accurate they are a decent facsimile of the the real thing. I've ordered a kit from Miniature Garden in Etsy, and we'll see how close I came to to creating believable water flowers

With the water flowers figured out, I decided to try my hand at creating koi.

While there are several Youtube tutorials on making koi, I followed Sugar Charm Shop because she creates the entire pond.

To begin, it is a good idea to search for images on the Web to see how a koi actually looks and then begin.

• Tools: sharp edge blade, tiny ball stylus, a sharp point stylus, or may just a toothpick if you don't have these job specific clay tools to do the sculpturing.
• Supplies: The tutorial mixes white soft Fimo with white translucent Fimo, but I used just the translucent for the first fish. You can see the difference of the two clays after baking. Before baking, the white clay and the translucent look the same. For the other two fish I used Special Effect Fimo, white clay with glitter. I accidentally bought that pack, so why not use it to give the fish that fishy glimmer t? Actually mixing it with the translucent will give a very nice effect, I think.

Before  baking the fish: 

After baking

You can barely see the glitter in the front fish.

Shaping fish is pretty simple: begin with a fat rope of clay then work it into the shape by pinching one end to make the head and elongating the other end to form the tail. You can see the differences in the faces and heads. With practice, I hope to get more consistent. Use the tools or the toothpick to sculpt the facial features.

To create the fins and tails, use the translucent clay to give that transparent look of those parts. Pat out a small circle of clay until it is very thin and cut the the fins and tails, using the pointed stylus to draw the veins in the tail and fins. I used the fine point stylus to sculpt and then to lift the pieces off the tile and place them on the body. Again, look a pictures to see where the fins go and how the they are shaped.

I used my craft acrylic paint to color the fish, mixing red and yellow to get orange. I certainly need to work on my painting technique some more.

After the paint dried, I baked my fish at 275 in the oven in 20 minutes. They are about an inch long, which represents a 12 inch fish. That's huge koi, but then koi to get big and mine were at least a foot in length. Gold fish won't get the large, so I'll have to practice making smaller fish. The gold fish are 6 inches at best, some with lovely flowing fan tails that I'll try to make for my mini pond.

What fun and easy project these were. I'll make a few more flowers when the kit arrives and I want cat tails. I may have to purchase a kit for them. Sugar Charm Shop shows how to fashion the pond using resin, which I have never worked with, so that will be an adventure.

Thanks for visiting. I always enjoy your comments, so if I haven't heard from you please say "hi." I'm ad free and don't share personal information. It's just little ole me and my friends. 

Have a great week.