And That Is That

All the foliage plants are done: 

So everything has switched places again; I wonder what I did? Anyways, these are the last six.



OK, it all changed again, but I didn't do anything; this is a photo of the whole grouping. There are two of each plant, one set to keep and one set to sell or pass on....

I hope to be able to start on my klompenfabriek later this week, as our wood shipment has arrived and it contains my stairway stringers. Onwards and forwards!

More Plants, Kind of Boring?

We didn't have our usual Wednesday afternoon virtual meeting, but I worked on potting up some plants both then and today; this is the newest batch.

The coloured ones are begonia varieties, while the three green ones are maranta varieties; I'm used to the smaller prayer plants, but must admit that the the tall ones is quite new to me. There are only half a dozen or so plants left to go, except for one other pink begonia, the rest are marantas. And along with one more tall maranta, there are two pretty large ones and two huge ones.

These printies are probably the nicest ones I've ever seen. As mentioned, they are from 1 zu 12, the German magazine. This week I was gifted another copy of that, and there are half a dozen things in it that I'm just itching to put together!

Books....

Almost 6 dozen of them! I decided that if I'm going to glue my books together in the Books project, then they'll not be some of the special ones I got as gifts over the years. Those will stay separate, and I will cope with them when (if?) the shelves tip over again.

And it occurred to me too that in a bookstore, the same books get grouped together on the shelves; that's what I should probably do with the books that are sort of assembled now. There are some children's books, so perhaps I should put those on a separate shelf.

Tomorrow should be another miniature workshop via Skype, and I intend to work on plants. There are quite a few of them that need shaping, gluing onto stems, and planting. I found two nearly used-up tubes of toothpaste, so that will give me two white flower pots for the red- or pink-leaf plants.

Sometimes, Mess Occurs!

The last few days, I've been involved in photographing and writing up my completed Camp MiniHaHa projects for the past 17 years, for a blog the camp has begun to help us cope with no actual camp this year due to Covid-19.

This was the only completed project still to be photographed. The last time it went on display somewhere, some (!) damage occurred, and it turned out a bit more extensive than I thought. The only thing that didn't get messed up at that display was the"glass" portion of the street lamp; I think our cat was responsible for that disappearing. However, I continue to hold out hope that I will find that missing centre one of these days, if only my memory would kick in and tell me where the heck I put it the last time I saw it.

When I made the two bookshelves at the left, I had a hard time getting them to fit within the confines of the space in the altered books. Well, I have admitted again and again that I am straight-line challenged, and in sanding them - manually, with a piece of sandpaper around a block - the ends were somewhat rounded. Access to the box interior is by removing the back wall; the shelves stand against that back wall. I hate to glue anything down permanently, and the hundred or more books in this setting may just have to be stuck together  to keep them on those shelves. But I will try sticking them on shelf-sized slices of acetate first; if they fall out, they will fall out as a unit and not as individual books, I hope!

The first solution (I'd love for it to be the permanent one!) is to glue a solid wooden plinth under each shelf, to even things out. The shelves are, however, tall and top-heavy, so I suspect more support will have to be found. Already repaired are the front window, and a very tiny delicate book stand, that lost one of its  wee supports.

 Perhaps I should consider a system where I can slide the entire shelf on a support that is part of the back wall, books and all. Oh well, here's to experimentation!

More Potted Foliage Plants

There is still at least one more pair of begonia plants to make up and pot. I hope I have enough pots! The light green plants are the first of the prayer plant (maranta) family; there are at least another dozen to go.

While the green-leaf plants look good in terra cotta pots, I planted the red ones in white pots, as there would otherwise be too much red. The remaining begonia pair is pinkish, and I have to decide what sort of pot would look good with them.

As mentioned in the previous post, these plant printies are from 1 zu 12, the German magazine. They are very good quality, and I did have them professionally printed, one of my few outside trips recently. Our scanner is not very good with European A-4 paper, and tends to cut off the edges all around.

To shape these, I first ran a ball stylus around the outside edges of the leaves, on the back. Then I flipped them over, and made a little hook-shaped crease in the centre, as one side of their leaves is smaller than the other; another name for these is elephant-ear begonias, a very good nickname! The wire stems are fine gauge, light or dark green or red, with a 90 degree hook at the top which I use to glue them down on the leaf printie.

Boutique Pulchinella continues to fill up.

Begonia Plants

I am making plants. All of the plants I am working on are foliage plants, and this first batch is begonias, all colours of them. The printies came from an issue of 1 zu 12, the German-language miniature magazine. There will, eventually, be two pots of each plant.

I have returned to half days at my volunteer job (museum accessioning), and my co-volunteer gifted me with three terra cotta pots; the green begonia is in one of them. I have never before come across pots in this size; they are in between the wooden ones I use and the terra cotta ones available at places like Michael's (North American hobby shop).

 My collection of white plastic caps will also be used in this project; in my house, most of the smaller plants are in white ceramic pots of many different shapes and sizes. There are four more begonia varities to pot up, and then there are about a dozen maranta varieties; the most common of these is known as a prayer plant. As some of those are quite small, they will go into my tiniest pots.

Toothpaste caps and the like are kind of a cliche in miniatures, but sometimes simple things are more eye-catching - in a good way - than complicated ones. And they're free....

Soon!

Having some problems with my eyes the last few days, a lot of visual migraines, so I haven't been doing minis. However, once things settle I will be back!