We did some more sorting of our mutual friend's miniature stash, this time we dealt with landscaping materials and a variety of flower-making materials. Among the stash were a number of plant kits, very well done laser cut kits, that Marilyn and I shared as Louise is not about to try making plants when she knows people who can make them for her....
One kit had been finished, but in the moves and with the packing, it had suffered; that one was easy to fix, as you can see below:
This is a gorgeous caladium kit. When I got it, there were several bare stems, and a stem with a leaf that was just in the box. While sorting, I found the missing leaves, so they were duly glued back on to their stems. The stem with the leaf was replanted in a bare spot, and two stems that were too tall were cut short and now look better. Easy!
These are most of the stems and leaves for a Schefflera (Umbrella) plant. The paper used is much softer, and the baggie in the foreground contains some of the leaves that had come off the laser cut leaf rosettes. I've more or less repaired the leaf at the extreme left, strengthened some of the very tiny ends of the leaflets with a dot of tacky glue, and given the leaves some shape. The larger leaf rosettes should have nine leaflets, while the progressively smaller ones have seven and five. All of them need strengthening and shaping or re-shaping. This one is rather more of a challenge....
I don't know about this poor thing! There should be at least seven lily stems, but this is all that was left. I can probably re-do the petals by trimming a similar punch I have, and there are lots of leaves yet to release from the laser-cut sheet. But, I don't have the stamens, which are very delicate dots on the end of tiny stems; one is all that there is on the bare-looking stem. The leaves on the finished stems are placed rather too close together, and I am not sure sure how I can get those off; I may have to carefully cut each leaf rosette off the stem, and then carefully glue it back in a better position. Again, the leaf paper is very soft, and therefore very fragile. Sigh! I love these lilies, and would very much like to make them "come alive" again.
The hydrangea kit hasn't been put together, but I found the tiny blue blossoms everywhere while tidying up! I hope there are enough to finish the plant. Everything but the wires were present in this kit, but I have lots of that kicking around. The iris kit is complete, made in a different way from my technique, and I'm interested to tackle it.
The last kit, by a different manufacturer, is a pansy kit. Again, this kit uses a different technique from the one I use, and I do want to add some additional colour; the kit has little purple hearts and tiny plain white circles for the flowers, and they will require some additional colouring work to look good. This one came with a pot.
All the kits came with their own "dirt"; I use unused tea leaves, so I'm interested to see what the dirt in these kits is made of. I am not sure if any of these kit makers are still producing flower kits. One of the kits Marilyn got is a fuchsia, and I'm very curious as to the shape of the flower parts the designer of the kits used; all the magazine and on-line instructions I've seen make flowers that are rather out of scale.
I do have some kits in my stash that I haven't made up yet; another UFO project, some day!
The last container of mini stuff we have to sort through is a heavy load of polymer clay....
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