Well, It Took Three Days....

The berries are done! My eyes hurt! And I still have to make the flowers....


The paper for the leaves is very interesting in this Pascale Garnier kit; it reminds me of cigarette papers but can you paint those? (No, I never smoked but when I was a child in The Netherlands I had older cousins and uncles who rolled their own!) The instructions suggested creasing them by pressing down on them with the back of an Xacto knife, and it works beautifully that way. To fold the little stem, I pushed down on the back of it with the tip of my favourite bent tweezers. The photo below is of the first set of leaves and the berries at the top of the stems:

The last batch of berries is drying. I had to make myself go away to allow things to dry completely, so I did some embroidery in between gluing sessions. Step two is to glue the first sets of berries to the point where the tiny leaves meet the stems: 

They are starting to look good, aren't they? I am surprised, as this is an extremely fiddly process, and I had no real idea if it was going to look as I had hoped. Once this dries, I glued on a second set of leaves, the larger ones, and when they were dry, glued the remaining berries in place.


Once I added some more leaves - I'll have to add still more when I "plant" them - they began to look like the finished product. So here they are, 7 stems of Hypericum berries in various stages of ripeness. I really do like them:

But I definitely do NOT want to make more of these; however, the technique of setting the tiny berry stems on the leaves is one I will have to remember for other multiple flower heads. And once I get my new, task-specific glasses, my eyes should be able to cope a little better.


Now I have to start on the flowers that eventually turn into these little berries!