The Second Flower Making Session

Tuesday evening was very warm here, even with our heat pump set to cool, the living room was toasty and humid with 8 of us, plus a cat, making flowers.

One person is hiding! This session people chose the flowers they wanted to learn to make,  so we made sunflowers, irises, poinsettias and lily of the valley. Rather than make the entire plant, we learned to make the components, so we could finish them at home and take our time (our sessions usually run 2 hours).

The single flowers are the samples that were made. After we made our samples, time was taken to cut out additional flower shapes from our collections of punches. (The potted flowers were my samples.) As sunflowers are usually planted at the back of borders, I tend to leave the lower stems bare until the border is completely planted, then I fill in; no point in having those big leaves where they won't be seen, or get in the way of other plants!

We also did a little gift trade; I got the bird feeder with a wonderful grey budgie on it, hiding behind the potted cyclamen, unfortunately. The plant table is made with a woodsie on a wooden chess piece, ready to be finished to the lucky recipient's tastes or needs.

The lily of the valley were made to go into an existing pergola scene, so here they are photographed in their little spot, in front of the lilies. The lady who made these likes to make flowers to fill up this lovely little pergola vignette; the pergola itself is an old Joann Swanson design from the small format Nutshell News. Mine, I hate to admit, is pretty barren. I was going to plant it entirely in blue and yellow, but there really aren't all that many true blue flowering plants. That means another project to finish up one of these days....

I will post the delphinium instructions shortly. Wednesday morning I woke up very early and unable to go back to sleep. Suddenly, a full-blown picture of a Steam Punk radio erupted into my brain, so I got up and sketched and wrote, and before I had had my second cup of coffee, several other small Steam Punk accessories had made themselves manifest as well. Currently, I am working on the mantel clock and the hot plate/water kettle.

Why Steam Punk? Well, Camp MiniHaHa is coming up next month, we are doing an altered book scene, and I wanted mine to be an antiquarian bookshop, print- and mapshop. Then it decided it also wanted to be set in an alternate Steam Punk universe. As I can't carve worth a bean the furniture will be quite simple, but the accessories and décor will scream Steam Punk - hopefully! I'll post photos as I finish the items.