Got Some Things Done Wednesday

 We had a mini get-together Wednesday, and I did manage to get some things done.    

And now I have to start tidying away all my paint bottles, flower-making supplies, find a jar to put the purple flower stuff in, finish the hydrangeas, finish the lavender, make space on my worktable, etc., etc.

I'd better get to work! 

The heart punch I need makes a 1/8" (4 mm) flower petal, and I have found one on-line; now I just have to figure out how best to acquire it, in order to make the actual roses, and then the little garden corner can continue on....

Rose Hips, Rosebuds, Leaves and a Rosebush Skeleton

Before I began making flowers etc., I thought I'd better make a skeleton for the rose bush for the corner garden vignette. This is just a beginning, smaller side branches have to be added, But it was necessary to get an idea of how many (too many!) flowers and leaves, etc., would be needed.

The lovely wooden barrel the bush is growing out of is an old English Leather after-shave bottle top, that my father saved for me and which has been around for probably around 20 years or so! I think if some hoops are added, it will look more like a barrel.

Kind of a bird's eye view, but what you see here is a beginning on the leaves for the rosebush, along with the start of rosebuds and rose hips - these are the green ones, the bodies of the orange ones, made of layers of glue on wire, are still drying. It is a lot of work, but I hope it will look like the original vision I had of this little project.

Now I have to research where I can order a tiny heart punch to make the leaves for the roses....

 

The Long Hard Journey to a Rosebush....

 

It certainly doesn't look like much as yet, but those little pieces of wire sticking out of the foam will become  Dog Rose (Rosa canis) buds and rose hips; they're made of glue on wire, and the thick, tacky glue takes time to dry, especially as we are experiencing a recurrence of April weather here; endless rain or dripping mist, grey skies, no sun, and despite it being near the end of June, the down duvet is back on our bed, I wore my winter coat again this weekend, and we actually had the heat pump give us heat instead of air cooling!

We enjoyed our company, and with various festivals happening around here, even if the weather is pretty bad, we are out quite a bit. The rose bush is going to take lots of time, especially if I have to order a small heart punch for the petals; I have mislaid my heart punches, or perhaps I wore them out....

The rose bush is from an old issue of 1 zu 12, sent to me many years ago by the late Dutch miniaturist, Elly de Kraker. We had corresponded via email on a miniaturist website which I can no longer access, and met up at a Dutch miniature fair one year. I have a lot of very good tutorials that she sent to me. Unfortunately I don't have the date of that tutorial, otherwise I would share it with you.

By my estimate, to create a good-sized climbing rose bush for my garden corner vignette, I'll need hundreds of buds, blooms, rose hips in various stages of ripeness, and many more sets of leaves. The paper for the leaves is being painted, layers of leaf green with a sprinkle of rusty brown to represent the inevitable spots I get on rose leaves....

Hopefully you'll come back to check on my progress!

The Stage is Set....

The Garden Corner is now constructed, and the next step will be to "dress" the stage; I have a bit of theatre experience, and if you've been following this blog for a while, you will already know that I operate on the belief that, if it looks like what it is supposed to be, I've succeeded.

The basic L-shape is made of off-cuts of inexpensive foam core board, mostly from the $ stores, a double layer for the base and a single layer for the back wall. The pavement and brickwork is made of egg carton bits and pieces, painted and with a little green "algal growth" around the edges. The fence is made of coffee stir sticks, and there is a bit of a story.

Dear Readers, there is a world-wide shortage of skinny coffee stir sticks. I had 5 1/2 left over from the Covid era, and went shopping for more. Three $ stores and a large supermarket later, I'd been informed that they just couldn't get them any more, supply issues, most likely. Hmmmm, the world supply of  non-hardwood trees is that scarce? The stir stick factory closed? I suppose it is possible. I did find a very small package for a very large price, and Sunday one of my knitting group friends let me know that they are once again available at that supermarket (unlike last week), at 100 sticks for $4.50 - they used to be sold in $ stores for 100 sticks for $1.25; that's more than three times the previous price.  

 Fortunately, my knitting group friend is one of two ladies who do a lot of volunteer work for my church, and they said they thought there were some skinny stir sticks left over in the basement kitchen. I found just 21 of them, and combined with the 5 I had, was able to construct the fence. Now I wonder if I should go and buy the much more expensive ones, before they too disappear. Be warned, Dear Readers....

Once again, I used my $ store white paint, and got a wonderful distressed, shabby chic finish on the wall and the fence. The faucet is a white metal miniature, painted to look like tarnished brass and with a worn green handle; the pipe is a painted tooth pick section, and the brackets holding the pipe in place on the wooden pillar are painted card, with pin heads for nails. To mimic metal, I painted the surfaces with dark gray paint, then dry brushed them with terra cotta, with another dry brushing of pewter for the iron and gold for the brass.

A bird house has been cut, and many flowers have to be made, along with assorted shabby chic garden accessories; I'd like to see if I can make an aged bistro chair, and if I can't, I still have several unfinished  bench kits from years ago. The colour scheme will be distressed white, pink, blue and assorted colours in the purple range, with apple green accents. And the potting bench I made during Covid, from stir sticks, toothpicks and scrap wood, will be a permanent part of the vignette.

My youngest daughter and her husband arrive for a week this Wednesday, so I may not have too much time to devote to minis for the next week. However, I'll be back!