Bamboo!

This turned out just as I had hoped! It still needs a proper, edged flower-bed, but it fits very nicely in that corner of the Japanese vignette. Two days' work, I must be crazy....

I started by stiffening a piece of coarse cotton thread with glue, and allowing that to dry. Once it was dry, I wound it two to three times around portions of my stems, actually bamboo skewers, and glued it down. I did this by eye, so it would be irregular. Tomorrow, I'll post a close-up, as I hope to have the flower-bed done then, so you can see the nice little joints in the bamboo.

Once that was dry, I painted the thread-wrapped skewers with green paint. The joints are highlighted with a dry brushing of lighter green paint, which adds dimension to the rings of thread. Then I started on the leaves.

I have a punch with three sizes of sword-shaped leaves on it, so I punched about a hundred or so of those in three shades of green-painted paper, to add variety. The leaves were creased down the centre to give them dimension, and I began gluing them on to very thin strips of curved, green paper stems. The top of each bamboo stem has three sets of three small leaves, pointing upwards. Then I did a couple of rows of the medium-size leaves, transitioning from 3 to 5 per stem. At the base, I used the larger size of leaves, sometimes mixed in with the odd medium-size one. The lower end of the stems will be left bare. Tomorrow, once they are thoroughly dry and planted in their bed, I'll spray them with a clear satin spray.

I need to paint paper for Japanese maple leaves, and then punch myself into a stupor as I'll likely need hundreds, to fill in my Japanese maple tree, which will go on the other side of the doorway. I've saved a very nicely-shaped branched twig from the garden for that.