New Batch of Flowers

It has taken a couple of weeks to work out how to make some of the flowers that I need to reproduce two Real Life floral arrangements in miniature, to be displayed in the Floriana flower shop. When the arrangements are completed, I'll post photos of the real thing and my miniature versions.

These were almost all made today, most of them during our Wednesday afternoon virtual mini meeting. From left to right, approximately, strelitzia or bird of paradise flowers,a branch of privet, orange and yellow gerberas, large and small carnations, assorted foliage, and in front on the left, some St. John's Wort berries.

The R & D phase of these miniature flowers takes much longer than the actual flowers themselves, as ideas are tried (and found not to work!), new ways of making them are considered, samples are produced, and then I get to play with colours. The berries were easy, as I made a whole plant of these a few years ago for the apothecary garden. I am very pleased with the way the bird of paradise turned out, as they had to be "invented" from scratch, based on photos on the internet. My wedding bouquet half a century ago was made up of these flowers, and they also feature on the tiled kitchen walls in our house.

The yellow gerberas are the second batch, as the first ones were multi-petaled, and when I looked at the photo of a several years' old birthday bouquet, they were actually quite simple. I have a bunch of yellow multi-petal gerberas now for some other arrangement....

The hardest thing, I think, will be coming up with a good miniature version of goldenrod flowers, which were used as "filler" flowers for both of these arrangements. I am playing with model railroad foliage, hair spray or something like that, and flocking powder; once I am satisfied with my version, I'll post a photo. Then I can actually build the arrangements!