Now It's On to the Flowers, Day 1

My task glasses arrived today, so despite bad weather - sleet and freezing rain - we picked them up and guess what, up close I can see now! But a meter away everything is blurry....


However, I am noticing that reading, embroidery and close miniature work are much easier, so it was worth it. I am going to be one of those old ladies who have 3 pairs of glasses hanging around their necks!


Today, I began on the flowers. The tutorial for them was on the French Advent Calendar for 2007, which I think you find via the jicolin site. The plan is to tackle these the same way as the berries, and use leaves to hold the additional blossoms. The hardest part with these is the tiny tuft of frayed-out silk thread required to represent the stamens of the St. Johnswort flower.

To start with, I put a blossom on each of the 7 stem wires. Then I glued on the thread tuft. When that was completely dry, I carefully dry-brushed the ends of the trimmed tufts with orange paint. Next, I placed 2 small leaves; fortunately, there were exactly enough left in the kit for this purpose. (The kit was not for the flowers, remember!)  Then it is on to the individual blossoms; I think I will have to make 6 or 7 dozen of these, and just hope I have enough of the fine wire for that. Once the blossom and the sepal, a very tiny star, have been threaded onto the wire, I have to glue on the silk thread and wait for it to dry.

As you can see, it is the same method as was used for the berries. The tiny stars for the sepals are only a couple of mm, or perhaps 1/8", across. The blossoms are a little bigger. The US penny gives an idea of the idiotic scale at which I'm working. And the sepals are optional, but I decided I might as well give it a try. These bits are all waiting for their stamens, which I will get to work on and allow to dry before supper.