Ideas and a Progress Report

 Yes, I am still working on the little oriental carpet, in fact, I worked on it Wednesday afternoon while enjoying the company of my fellow miniaturists, Louise and Marilyn. The outer narrow border and its counterpart around the central portion only need the little crosses filled in, and the deep red centre is also all but filled in.

I was able to get out for a trip to the sea on Tuesday, as well as get a behind-the-scenes look at a small, local, very well done, museum. To get behind the barriers and be allowed to open the storage areas is definitely a big plus of my volunteer job.

As my eyes are still in the troublesome stage (doctor's visit in 10 days), I'm not able to do a great deal of close-up work. However, I did pull out two FAME kits, prepared by Marilyn, and did a dry-fit.

This is the carcass of a market stall, minus some details, which I hope to turn into a decorative Christmas market stall. We still hope to have an opportunity to display our creations in early December, but don't as yet know that it will actually happen. All three of us who meet up have Christmas minis, so the suggestion was we would do a display of seasonal items. This is, to me, a good excuse to give some time to this project, for which I've accumulated items for some years. Of course, there is always room for more, and I hope to be able to get some of the marvelous wooden minis being produced in Europe these days.

This is a mirror image of my flower shop, Floriana. The intention is to make this one a small pastry and coffee shop, with perhaps a couple of 2-person cafe tables outside it. As this project needs more time, (I haven't actually made any of the items I want to put in it!), it will have to go on the wait list for now, but dry-fitting it like this is intended to get my imagination working. I can take mental and written notes, and check out useful tutorials on-line and in magazines, which will speed up the actual building process when that time comes.

The trees are definitely turning orange and red, earlier than usual, probably due to the inordinate amount of rain we've had here this year. If only we could have shipped some it out west; my children and their spouses have been living in smoky forest fire conditions for weeks. There is a serious drought out there, which is very odd as usually, British Columbia was our wettest province! Every plant in our garden is much taller than in previous years, and most of the apples on our front-garden orchard are dropping well before they're truly ripe. As a result, dishes made with apples have featured regularly in our menu. For the two of us, we have half a dozen jars of apple butter....But, we've discovered that warmed apple butter is very good on vanilla ice cream!

Birthday Arrangement in Miniature

 Several years ago, I received the flower arrangement below for a significant birthday from my older daughter, who comments on the blog as Lady Iolanthe. The arrangement looked like it should be do-able in miniature, so I took a good photo of it.

It has taken me at least two years to "get around" to making this arrangement in miniature, and it is intended to go into the display window of the miniature flower shop, Floriana. The last flower I had to "work out" in miniature was the goldenrod, of which there is quite a bit in this arrangement. I woke up too early this morning, and decided to give it a bit of thought. My first attempt, model railroad foliage with fine yellow sand, just didn't look right. Then I remembered that I had some fine plastic foliage, the right colour for the goldenrod base, in my stash. And here is the finished miniature:

It is a bit rounder than the original, but I think the result is pretty good! As I couldn't find my box of fishing weights, I looked in a box of washers for something to weight the tiny basket down, but nothing that would fit was heavy enough. That's when I noticed the cone-shaped chimney top I had removed from the stove in the wooden shoe factory, and that's what's in the basket; Waste Not, Want Not, I guess! It is heavy enough to give heft to the basket.

I will be making more goldenrod for the Bird of Paradise arrangement that was a gift for our recent 50th wedding anniversary, from our far-away children (no visiting, thanks Covid!) I will take a photo of how I did the goldenrod pieces, in case anyone else is crazy enough to try it....

Got Some Work Done Toay

The sun came out, it was dry, and it was warm enough to finish spraying the stove for the wooden shoe factory.

Taken at an angle, obviously, and the metal plate to go into the wall is still on the kitchen counter. In order to dry the piece, I pushed a branch from the apple tree through the stove, which dislodged the pencil sharpener inside! Serendipitous happening....

The stove being done, I can now stucco the remaining walls of the wooden shoe factory, yeay!

I also did a dry run - minus most of the foliage and all of the goldenrod - for the first flower arrangement I am working on. It is obvious that I'll have to cut down on the number of flowers in the arrangement; a miniaturised floral piece is simply not big enough to be an exact copy. It has to fit into a small basket, and I need to find my tiny lead fishing weights to hold that down, before I do the planting. Also, I still have to "invent" goldenrod flowers.

At least I was able to get some miniature work done again!

 

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!

 

Happy Easter!

Nothing like tooting your own horn! My Easter card to you is a photo of the spring plants in my Floriana flower shop, as there is an Easter arrangement in the window. And the other pastel spring flowers will hopefully give those of us in less moderate climates a small foretaste of what is to come.

The snow here is nearly melted, and we are waiting for the usual spring floods; there is an ice jam at a dam up-river, which so far has affected a community down-river from us only. For those of you who are new to this blog, I live near the Saint John river, in New Brunswick, Canada. This is a huge river by Canadian standards, and also forms part of the border between us and the USA. Every year, this river floods its banks, as it is the major and only real watershed on this side of the St. Lawrence River; it can go up more than 6 meters in the spring. Last year we had very serious flooding, but the forecast this year is that it will be less, as we have had a very mild winter. I live well above the river, and do not have to worry about flooding here, although it can affect the way I travel into the city.

As the weather has switched from sunny and warm to cold and wet almost every other day or so, I am behind on my spray painting, which I prefer to do out of doors because of paint fumes. The little stove for the wooden shoe workshop has had its first coat, but definitely needs another in some places. The radiator for the loft project is now sprayed, although I would like to give it another coat. I have to wait for the temperature to go above 10 degrees Celsius to be able to paint out of doors, and it can't be damp....

In the meantime, I am attempting to create some flowers for a couple of Real Life floral arrangements I am reproducing in miniature, for the other displays of the flower shop. Eventually, I hope to be able to change out the window for each of the four seasons, and have some plants ready to go for each of those, but each window needs a spectacular display, as a focal point. I am attempting to create miniature goldenrod flowers, which feature in both of the arrangements I am trying to reproduce, but it is hard going and quite, quite messy...

I hope the Easter Bunny was good to you; we have mini eggs, Ferrero eggs, and peanut butter and chocolate Easter treats here.

 

Magnolia Shrubs

I mentioned that I was making some magnolia shrubs for the planters outside the flower shop, Floriana. This is the first attempt; although I like the look of the plants, the bare branches looked odd to me. The only thing I could do to finish things up, was to make some flower and leaf buds. For these, I used tiny painted twists of model magic, a very lightweight air-dry clay.

After painting them a very light green, I glued them here and there on the shrubs, and once the glue was dry, brushed the bases very lightly with a nearly dry brush and the colour of the branches. The petals were made from white paper, one side coloured with a pink-purple colouring pencil, following a tutorial in the May/June/July 2020 issue of 1 zu 12 magazine, written by Hannelore Merchel.

They look quite nice in the French wooden planters, either side of the door to Floriana. A very small touch of spring, when it is bitterly cold outside with lots of snow. Because of where we live, the sky is an incredible light turquoise blue, a colour I always associate with the coldest winter days, and the sun is bravely shining.

Back to the wooden shoe workshop now....

 

Finished a Couple More Things

 This afternoon, Marilyn and I were working away at our miniatures for our weekly session via Skype, and I managed to finish last week's planter and plants, as well as finish a basic shabby chic bathroom shelf. I am happy with the way they turned out. The planter will go on the side wall of Floriana, my shabby chic flower shop, and the bathroom shelf will be dressed with odds and ends and go into my sales box. I think the shelf might have been an old CMHH item.

As there were some leaves left over of the arrowhead plant in the planter, I potted them up to place somewhere in Floriana; perhaps they will spur me on to make the Autumn window display!

This May Look Boring, But....

Today marked the arrival of a very early birthday present. Right now, it is just a bunch of cut wooden pieces, like the other two parts of this post, but I am tickled pink! Marilyn D. found enough pre-cut pieces of the project that eventually became my flower shop, Floriana, and had enough off-cuts left that I have all the components to make another version of this project. Thank you, Marilyn! Swirling around in my brain right now is a tiny French bistro, to complement Floriana while at the same time being its own project.



As a group, we were going to make market stalls this Spring, but the pandemic means we can't get together for the near future. Another project's components Marilyn dropped off are the pieces for the covered market stall. Mine has long been intended to become a Christmas market stall, and I hope we can work on this together via the internet.



From such humble beginnings, etc.! I also have two other things ready to work on, as long as the isolation continues, once my arm is healed. One is another small display I hope to use for shows, made from an off-cut of MDF and a commercially made wooden base.



That's how Boutique Pulchinella started, and it will be interesting to see what this piece ends up as. As well, in the Carpenter-in-Chief's workshop, are the components for my wooden shoe factory room box. What this means is, that even if the stay at home edict continues, I will have things to keep me busy. This is a good thing! Also, I found the container with my electrical components, mostly LED lighting, so hopefully I can finish the build of  the candy shop once we have the false roof made to hide the lighting battery pack.

The snow is gone, as you can see through the patio door.  I am doing strengthening exercises for my arm along with stretches with weights. Now I am off, briefly, to the $ store to pick up paint, glue and wire, allowing me to continue once my arm says go for it. We have been very lucky here in our small province; no new Covid cases for more than 2 weeks, all 118 diagnosed cases are well again and home, and not one death has been attributable to Covid here, despite the aging population in New Brunswick. We are, however, still being very careful to stay well here, keeping our social distances and lining up outside shops until it's our turn. I hope you are well too.

and Another Interlude....

As it was 14 Celsius at noon today, we decided to take a walk around our country block. This is a definite sign of spring! At the bottom corner of our property, we have a culvert that mostly just has a trickle of water in it, except in spring when it can become wild enough to drown small animals. Today, it had melted enough that there was actual water flowing out of the pipe.



A few days ago, when my daughter and I went for a walk, we saw a sort of inchworm caterpillar; today, there was an actual woolly bear, so it must be spring, right?

Inspired by nature, I took another day off from the Book Nook, and created a floral arrangement that is destined for my flower shop's autumn window.



This is based on a Pepperwood Miniatures arrangement in an old issue of Dollhouse Miniatures, from Sept.-Oct. '09. I used model railroad oranges for my bittersweet berries, and used Copic markers on a piece of computer paper for the maple leaves. The veins on the leaves were drawn in with an extremely fine artist's dip pen - one I use at work for putting numbers on museum artifacts - and white acrylic ink. The stem of the berries is left over from yesterday's silver dollars, while the stem of the leaves is brown floral wire, painted and with tea dust bark sprinkled on.

I'm happy! There was an eagle or osprey circling above us as we were walking today, and in a patch of woods down the road ther must have been a million twittering birds, likely sparrows or finches.

It's Not Going To Be Finished, But

When I woke up very early Monday morning, I realized that I was starting to get anxious to finish the Japanese Courtyard completely, so I decided, for my own mental health, that I would do as much as I could and exhibit it as a Work in Progress.

That decision made, I was able to finish up two pieces to fill the empty wall spaces in the Shabby Chic flower shop.

The mirror-backed arched window flower box is a miniature of the one across from our bed at the Inn at Fisherman's Cove, in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, where the Carpenter-in-Chief and I stayed the night of the CFB Shearwater hobby show. I'd been trying to think of something to display hanging plants, and this one was just perfect to do in miniature. It still needs plants, though.

The arched-top shelf unit will hold plants and flower shop stuff; it was hand-painted and aged to look like an old piece reclaimed from granny's attic. The flower box is made entirely of mat board, with floral wire muntins and mirror card on the back. The shelf is a combination of mat board for the back and sides, with wood for the shelves.

Today I worked on the second hydrangea, and there is a variegated Japanese iris in the making for the corner by the longer fence, which is quite dark and needs lighter-coloured stuff. The spade-shaped things in the foreground of the photo is an attempt at a large blue hosta which may not be successful!
And the painted domes are, of course, bases for garden plants.

So I did a tutorial of sorts for the hydrangea, for which I'll do a second entry. At the moment, the "grass" in the hydrangea corner is drying, so I have a little bit of time.

Back to the Flower Shop Project

The show in Halifax was fun, which is a good thing because sales didn't really cover expenses. It was good to reconnect with some people I hadn't seen since last Fall or since 2015.

The shabby chic flower shop survived the trip very nicely. Although I still haven't found the 8 tiny rare earth magnets I hoped to use to keep the store front in place, double-sided tape helped for the show. Transport was a breeze, as I stuck everything down on acetate overlays on the various surfaces, with small and micro-size glue dots. A loosely bundled pile of gift-wrap tissue kept the furniture from sliding around during travel - the roads here are generally very bad, full of holes and bumps, at the end of winter.

The items on the tables and shelf were stuck to cut-to-size pieces of acetate from packaging, which makes it very simple to pull all the items on a particular surface off for replacement, for example. The entire front window display, coloured "floor" and all comes out ready to replaced with other seasonal displays.

The shop as it looked at the show. The light green border on the outside edges is the colour I'm using to paint the sides and back of the Japanese vignette, a soothing wasabi mustard sort of green.

The interior of the shop, with some grape hyacinths on the left to add a bit of colour to that area. The painting and shutter on the back wall were hiding the fact that I still have to add some interest to the middle of this floral shop composition, not to mention the currently blank side walls. You can enlarge the photo for a better view. The acetate sheet is virtually invisible.

I took a separate photo of the window display; the crocuses in the white "tin" planter and the Easter arrangement were among the three things I put together at the last minute - Thursday evening saw me making the Easter eggs (polymer clay) just before packing everything up. Yes, that is masking tape hanging off the left side, in the absence of the magnets I am using that to keep the front on so the cat won't be tempted to pull things out of the shop to play with....

In an hour I get to put the second coat of green paint on the Japanese vignette; then it can dry overnight and tomorrow will, hopefully, see cherry-wood stained stripwood over all the narrow MDF edges. Hopefully, using the same stain as on the house and gate will unify the piece.

Tuesday's Work

I spent  yesterday morning making printed scrap booking cardboard flower pots with rims, and then the afternoon and evening in making the tiny succulent plants to go into them. You can see them in the corner shelf unit, and the odd one scattered here and there, in the photo below.

This was also the try-out of the FAME club project, minus the front display window etc., to see what I needed to make. There are a couple of gaps, most noticeably the wall area; however, I don't have the time to make a shelf and a wall planter, so I will put a temporary something in there.

Today, I made a crocus arrangement, a grape hyacinth arrangement, and an Easter arrangement to go into the display window. These will fill some of the gaps, but I would like to make a hyacinth basket arrangement as well; however, it will have to wait until much later in April.

There are two tall plants in front of a white shutter between the tables and the corner unit; I will have to raise them up a bit temporarily, to fill a little of that back wall space. I think there will be enough to display this project as a "Work in Progress" - still to come are a couple of buckets of roses in yellow and salmon. Now I am going to take everything out of here and make a hole to hang a wind chime so it will be visible from the shop window.

I hope to stick everything in place for travel tomorrow afternoon, after a slightly truncated work day. We head out to the show bright and early on Friday....

Moving Right Along Some More

Two or more days' work, have resulted in a pillar for the fancy arrangement, a step arrangement for smaller plants, Cattleya orchids under the dome, hydrangeas under the table, and a set of 3 small ball topiaries. I am tired....

I should have lowered the photo a little, too. Tomorrow, I hope to make some polymer clay plants and pots for the Shabby Chic flower shop.

More Plants for the Club Project

The sun is shining very brightly today, which is interfering somewhat with my attempts at daylight photography. This week, once the commission was done, I've made some more items for the FAME club project, the shabby chic flower shop.

The plant on the left is  commercial one I purchased at a show some years ago. The variegated ivy in the macrame hanger was Wednesday's project, along with the little yellow birdhouse with the sun .
It was made from mat board and cardboard from a package, with a bit of brown floral wire for the perch.The macrame hanger was a Camp MiniHaHa gift.

 Today, I put together the variegated pothos plant, sitting on the shelf; we have a couple of these in the house, they tend to put out very long branches which you then have to lead along shelves or something. There is one, belonging to my daughter, just above the computer. Now I just have to wait for the stems to relax a little more.

I made both plants from scrapbooking card in pale yellowish-cream. The ivy leaves were punched with two Ruth Hanke (Hanky Panky Crafts) custom punches, from the card which was painted green on the back. Each ivy leaf was then hand-coloured, using a dark green, fine-tip marking pen and two very sharp colouring pencils, in related shades of green. The leaves were then creased on a foam sheet, using the back of my Xacto knife. The stems were made from 4 pieces of sewing thread glued together.

The left-over card, with its back painted green, I painted a light green on the front. When this was dry I dry-brushed with two shades of yellow-cream paint, and then spattered with a toothbrush dipped in cream and white, watery paint. When all that was dry, I gave the card a coat of varnish, and proceeded to punch two sizes of small, heart-shaped punches. This plant also has thread stems, light-green in this case. By clicking on the photo, you can see the detail better.

And I decided to photograph the arrangement I kept, in the shop window; it fits very well in the bay.  I am very proud of this arrangement. Because of the sun, it was impossible to photograph both the shelf with the pot plants and the arrangement without huge blank areas of sun reflection, so I did it on its own....

Done in Duplicate

And here is the final product; you can click on the photo for a larger view. The brass pot arrangement will stay with me, while the arrangement in the pedestal vase is destined to go elsewhere. I am really pleased with how they turned out. I also learned quite a bit while making these, so it's win-win all around.

The arrangement was adapted from a Real Life one, changed a little to be suitable in miniature. It's meant to evoke Spring, and I think it does that.

I am now going to waste my time watching television rubbish for a while....

I've Finally Gone Round the Bend....

For those of you using Google translate, that means I've really gone crazy today! I decided to try a new way of making actual, fuzzy pussy willow buds. About.com carries a tutorial, which involved bits of thread, drops of glue, and flocking.

You start by making little "shelves" of glue, rather like thorns on a rose, along a piece of floral wire, and allowing those to dry. Then you paint wire and thorns reddish brown (I used brown iron oxide), and let that dry. While that is doing what it is supposed to do, you make tiny fuzzy buds on teeny pieces of brown sewing thread;

You stick those into foam (I used a grocery store foam tray) to dry thoroughly. Once dry, you cut the little fuzzy ball off just underneath the flocking, and glue those onto the "thorn" shelves on your floral wire. The result is really nice,

especially with the sun shining through, but it is a lot of work! When I first made miniature pussy willows, early in my attempts at flower making, I used tiny birch twigs from the garden, dotted glue here and there, and sprinkled very fine white decorator's sand over them. Years later, they still look pretty good. This new method may well be a once-off, but I'm glad I tried it!

The forsythia branches have now got tiny pale green leaves here and there, and the cherry blossoms are glued to their branches. The next step is assembling the floral arrangements,,,,,

FAME Project Roof with Progress Photos

So I described how I painted the card roof of the display window of my FAME club project; today, I painted the wooden roof of the structure. I began by gluing on thin wooden battens to represent the strips that hold the "copper" roof sheets in place, bringing them down over the front edge to give the illusion of applied copper sheeting rather than paint.

You can click on the photos to enlarge them, to see the detail. This is the dark khaki coat, which was then dry-brushed with terra cotta.

Here the turquoise and lime green blotching has been added; the raised areas of the roof pick up very nicely on the various paint colours. At this stage, things are already looking more like verdigrised copper than painted wood.

In this photo, the bronze metallic paint has been brushed on with a very dry brush; I love the way these effects come together! The original idea for this finish came from a Joann Swanson article in an old Nutshell News from 1995, but I adapted it for a more whitewashed look, to go better with the whole shabby chic ethos I have going on with this project.

And this is the end product, with the whitewash finish in place, dabbed and smudged with more of the bronze metallic paint. I'm now ready to do some chalk antiquing, but first, I have a commission to work on, to be ready for next weekend. As part of that, take a look at the before-and-after photos of a painted wooden "bean pot", that I hope to use as the basis for this commission:

I had originally intended, some years ago, to create an antique stoneware effect, but something put it off and it languished in my stash of stuff. It is a bit large for my flower shop, so I re-purposed it.

Again, please click to enlarge the photo to better see the detail. I have a number of aged brass flower containers in my house, complete with bits of verdigris and corrosion; I also see quite a bit of aged brass at my volunteer job, which involves museum accessioning, so it was fun to try and create an aged brass container. So here is my attempt to create one of these....

Now I have to see if it meets with the criterion of the commissioners of the project!

Display Window Roof Is Done

One of the things I wanted to try was a roof over the bay display window; I had planned to do a similar roof on my book vignette project, but it just wasn't going to work with the book spines. There are brass screws holding portions of the FAME project together, so doing a roof to cover them up seemed like a good idea.

As I am measurement-challenged, I tend to go with trial and error, so that is how this cereal box under-roof was designed. It is being supported by 3 wooden brackets inside the roof.

Because there is a slight gap between the top of the plastic window, and the top of the window frame, something was needed to mask that shortcoming (ha! that's a pun!). I've been playing with decorative scissors, so decided a verdigrised copper window surround might look good. Yes, I am very happy with that! It was made from manila file folder cardboard, and much paint. It is glued in place around the white top frame of the window.

This is the card roof; manila file folder with "rolled edges", cereal box cardboard strips for the copper strips, and more manila file folder for the corner peak flashing. The edge of the roof overlaps the edge of the decorative strip by about 1/8", or 3 mm.

And here is the painted, verdigrised copper roof. I need to do a tiny touch-up in one corner, I see. The paints used to create this effect include: a base coat of dark khaki, made by mixing dark brown and foliage green; then a dry-brushing with terra cotta paint to give the idea of weathered copper,
then a mottled layer of turquoise. This was followed by a mottled layer of lime green, created by mixing leaf green, light leaf green and turquoise. After that was sort of dry, I used a fan brush, quite dry, to add some streaks of metallic bronze acrylic. Over it all went a coat of whitewash, watered down, cheap dollar store white paint, brushed on from top to edge with a stiff bristly brush for a streaky effect. Once that was dry, I used my fingertip to dab and smear on bits of metallic bronze here and there, for copper shining through.

It's turned out just as I had hoped; the turquoise in the verdigris matches the turquoise of the door, and I still have a washed-out, chalky effect going. Well, that was my day....

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!

New Photos of FAME Project

Our meeting last week didn't happen, because of yet another storm. We are meeting this coming Tuesday instead. I have been working away at the club project, because I hope to take it to display at the CFB Shearwater Hobby Show in early April, in Halifax-Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

I have made some more flowers, in this case roses in white, to add to the shop. I'm trying different things inside the shop and window, to get some idea of how much space there is. The answer? Way more than I thought....

The shop with "stuff" in the window is shown above: I'm going to have to build some display pieces to showcase plants and flowers in the window, as different heights will display them more easily. On my worktable right now is an effort at making a large tulip display for the Spring window display.

The white roses are newly made, while the pink ones are my experiments from some years ago. They suit the colour scheme of the shop and will remain in place. The bucket of iris in the foreground is also several years old; their pastel colours will also work quite well. The large hanging plant needs to hang from a bracket on a beam to get it to a better height, right now it is tied on with fishing line.

The "marble" display table is finally done! It went through quite a number of incarnations, before I convinced the Carpenter-in-Chief that my original idea was the best one. I wanted room to display plants and flowers! I still have to design and build a shelving unit, though, based on a photo of a Real Life plant display unit I saw on the internet.

The irises and the roses are a little more visible here. I experimented with the pink ones, but I think I have it worked out with the white ones; they were done assembly-line style to allow glue to dry, and done in a couple of hours.

It's coming along nicely!