Three Days of Work!

I decided I wanted a spring tulip bouquet as part of the window display in the FAME club project, so I tried a new way of making tulips. While I like the results, it took three whole days to work my way through the various steps. The instructions were from Michele Carter of Pepperwood Miniatures.

In the back row, are the bead on top of the stem, with stamens and pistils made from glue-stiffened sewing thread; a single strand of black for the stamens, three strands of light green twisted together for the pistil. When dry, dot yellow paint on the pistil. So step 1, day 1 was stiffening the thread. Step 2, day 2, included snipping the threads to 1/8" (3mm) lengths, gluing the pistil in the centre and then gluing on 6 stamens per flower (!) once the pistil was dry. Then you trim (the back row isn't trimmed yet).

Step 3 is punching 6 petals per tulip, shaping them, and then gluing them on; first 3 evenly spaced, then 3 more when those are dry. The pink ones are complete, but the white ones only have 3 petals at this point.

So I punched petals while waiting for other petals to dry, and that took me all morning and part of the afternoon. Then you add the leaves, and plant the whole thing in a pot. Was it worth it? Well, you can see below; I won't make tulips this way again most likely, but the end result did turn out well.

The maddening thing is that all those lovely, time-consuming pistils and stamens are pretty much hidden by the petals of my tulips....

We miniaturists must be nuts!