Friday 1 April 2016

Beginning the Belladonna Plant

This one has had me thinking; the blossoms are bell-shaped, so how to make that happen with paper? I decided to use coffee filter paper, and coloured it a dark purply-red with a Copic market. Once the ink was dry, I dumped the punched flowers into warm water, pulled them out, and pushed them down quite firmly into the bottom of a Styrofoam meat tray. Although they aren't perfect, I think this may be the best I can do with this plant.






For the blossoms, I used the six-petal punch, and for the sepals, which show on both the blossoms and the berries, I used a small five-pointed star punch. The marker I used to colour the filter paper is shown below. If I were to do these flowers again, I would likely use a pinker colour of marker, but on checking out images of this plant I find a large variety in the colours.




Right now, they're all standing up, but the flowers actually hang downwards; the stems will be trimmed and I will use the same method of applying flowers and berries that I used with the St. Johnswort, short stems tucked into the leaves' attachment points.


That will be the next task, making and shaping the leaves. It's not easy to determine the exact shape of the leaves, all I know at this point is that there is usually a large leaf opposite a small leaf. I think I need to head to books for better images!



4 comments:

  1. Botanical diagrams might be your friend... Copy and paste the URL into your web browser. I can't make a link in the comments, unfortunately. :(

    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11396669#page/266/mode/2up

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  2. I can hardly wait to see this one Marijke! The St. Johnswort was incredible. for those of you who weren't as fortunate to see it in real life as I did - I couldn't believe how realistic it was - or how tiny! simply amazing! - Marilyn D. http://charminis.blogspot.ca

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  3. Your dedication to making the plants realistic is very inspiring! I never know which punches to use, or which papers to use! Thank you for showing the details of making these unusual plants!!!

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  4. This is totally INTERESTING and I am Captivated by your original method of making your Belladonna plants. I can hardly wait to see the finished flowers! :D

    elizabeth

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