Flower basket #2

In my previous post I said I would not show how I made flowers for the hanging baskets, but I have come up with a couple of new ideas that I want to share. Maybe they are not new at all, in which case you will just get a confirmation that the methods work.

As I have said repeatedly, I am not interested in making more of the same. I could have simply covered the other two baskets with my paper daisies, but that wouldn't have been much of a challenge. I tried punching red tissue paper, but it was too thin and just got crumpled. Then I thought that I could make roses from red tissue paper. I have made roses from oven-baked clay, but they would be too heavy for a basket. The tissue paper is, as you see, a paper crown I have been saving from Christmas. I save everything, and I have made fires with red and orange tissue paper. But now, roses.

This is what I did. Again, maybe it is a well-known method, but I haven't seen it. I wrapped a piece of paper round a length of dowel that I just happened to have in front of me - anything suitable will do. Then I cut off the excess of paper leaving 1mm that I then twisted and flattened. Then I pushed about 3mm of the paper from the dowel and cut off. Here are your little roses, ready to be glued onto your basket. (Or I guess you can add stems). 

It was easy to shape the flowers with tweezers before gluing.

I showed in the previous post what I used for basket.

So far so good. Again, I could have added some white and pink daisies, but I had been looking at various images and suddenly felt an urge to make some fuchsias. There are several tutorials on Pinterest about making paper fuchsias, in easy languages such as Spanish and Dutch, and all of them use punches. If I continue to make flowers and flower shops, I may invest in more punches, but at the moment I didn't have one required to make fuchsias. But I decided to make some anyway.

I punched out some five-petal flowers and some circles from appropriately coloured paper. Making holes in the middle curled them already, but I had to curl the inside bits slightly more. For stems, I used teeny tiny stamens from a full-size paper rose the origin of which I cannot remember. It was hard work because the flowers are so small. I put a ruler in the picture to give the sense of scale. 

Frankly, I didn't have the patience to make more than these even though I have more petals. I had to curl the outside petals back a bit more. I have a magnifying glass, but it doesn't combine well with my eyeglasses.

I like the result. The fuchsias are actually hanging over the side.

Then I simply added some generic pink flowers here and there.

Here the second basket joins the first one. In this picture, I have also made some improvements, adding mouldings and arranging the display in a more interesting way.

I will make at least one more basket, and maybe I will add a shelf, some posters, rolls of wrapping paper? The back wall looks too bare. I am enjoying myself.

Flower basket

My recent post in which I reflected over the amount of time and energy required for miniature-making has had a record number of views, but to my surprise also led to many indignant comments on Facebook. Apparently some people had not read the blog, just the title, thinking that I was outraged by pricing. Some comments said: "If you ask this question you will not understand the answer", or "Try for yourself and you'll see" (which is exactly what I did in the blog). When I asked one of the critics whether they had read my blog, they replied: "I don't read blogs". To be fair, I also got some praise from people who had read the blog.

Anyway, I decided to repeat the experiment today, without asking rhetorical questions in the blog title. For my florist shop, I want some hanging baskets because they will look nice in the foreground, and I had never made a hanging basket, so it's about time.

I found a good tutorial, but almost from start I adjusted it to my materials and methods. I had previously made topiaries, and I thought I could use the same technique for a ball-shaped basket arrangement. So I painted three felt balls green.

I abandoned my principle of making just one item to test because I wanted to clock my work, and also because I had three thingies I thought would make good baskets. (They didn't - more below).

The tutorial prescribes moss for the basket, but I don't have moss and I like recycling so I used a green fruit net I had been saving for the occasion.

Then it was just a matter of covering the balls with glue and dipping into a bowl of "moss". People always ask what kind of glue - ordinary all-purpose PVA. Up to this point, it took me an hour.

While the balls were drying I started making flowers. The tutorial does not show how to make flowers, and I won't show it either, because I have already shown some techniques in a previous post.

In a hanging basket, you have a mix of flowers so I made a little of everything, and I also cheated and used an old plant I am no longer happy with, made from grated hard foam. It looks like a generic flower and is easy to just glue on.

Meanwhile, I tried several constructions for baskets. I took pictures, but since none of my ideas worked there is no point in sharing. This was learning time, a lot of it, as I tried this and that, painted, decorated with stencils, even considered making real baskets from string, and I cut chains and found chain links, and then as I was looking for something I suddenly saw perfect hanging baskets, all ready to use. This is what happens when you have your miniature glasses on.

After that, it was just patience, and patience takes time. Gluing on flowers, making leaves. And I only finished one of the three baskets. I believe it took at least two more hours. Bit it was worth the trouble. Don't you think?

Florist shop

If you have followed my blog for some time you may have noticed that I easily become obsessed by my projects. One time I made all kinds of things from junk jewellery and fans. Another time I spent a week or so making wooden crates. Or miniature books. Or candles. Or curtains. Or shoes. Or whatever. I don't make anything for sale, and I am not much interested in making many of the same, but I like to explore various ways of making the same or similar things.

A couple of weeks ago I started making some flowers and after making paper flowers I made some from oven-baked clay:

 

I was quite proud of them to begin with, but then I realised - it also so happened that I had bought real tulips for a friend - that tulips are always hidden in leaves, and I spent some time making leaves, using the technique I learned when making daffodils and irises:

You need to curl the leaves to make them look realistic. I found a foam-lined coaster that served the purpose, and I used my nail file, as suggested in the tutorial. Each flower needed four leaves, so it took some time.

These are the colours I happened to have. Tulips come in every imaginable colour, and some are multicolour or speckled, but I will save that for later.

I got so excited that I decided to make a florist shop. This coincided with an urgent need to glaze my room boxes, and in the process I dismantled my old tea shop to use the box for florist's. Once upon a time you could get wine boxes at wine merchants for a small donation to charity, but not anymore, because, I think, many shops and cafes use them for decoration. I know I can buy a room-box kit, but I am not there yet. I have made several environments in shoe boxes and small cardboard boxes, but wine boxes look so much neater.

I did try to put all flowers I had in a cardboard box. Mainly just to see whether I liked the idea. I dug up Poundland furniture that I once bought in great numbers for upcycling.

 I liked the idea, but I definitely felt I wanted to use a wine box.

I tore down the wallpaper and the floor from the tea shop. This was one of my early room boxes, and I hadn't decorated it very well. And the wallpaper wouldn't have suited a florist shop anyway. I lined it with white lining paper and made a floor with a self-adhesive shelf lining.

I added wainscotting, using my old faithful 1:1 wallpaper. I still need to add moulding.

Meanwhile, I needed to do something with the furniture. This is the recurrent thing with room boxes (or any project that has an environment): you are eager to make whatever you are making - flowers in this case - but you have to prepare the environment first. Luckily, I like upcycling too.

I did a low table and two sideboards. The dresser in the centre moved from the tea shop - it isn't in scale, but I don't think it matters. I distressed it a bit. The fancy table on the left is made from a Chippendale kit. If you have a fancy piece in the foreground it catches the attention, and the rest is less noticed.

I am not sure about delft tiles - they were fine in the tea shop, but perhaps not in a flower shop. But that's easy to replace. Maybe with an old-fashioned flower pattern.

I also wanted a kind of multilevel display arrangement as they have in florist's, and I spent some time trying different options, including steps made from jenga blocks, but they looked too crude. So finally I built one from craft sticks.

 

When it was time to make more flowers it so happened - I swear, I hadn't planned it! - that a friend asked me to take her to a shopping centre, and while she was doing her shopping I ran over to my favourite hobby store. In my previous post I stated confidently that I wasn't buying a paper punch any time soon, but since I was there anyway... and they had a special offer... So it was meant to be.

I also bought two sets of tiny flowers in the wedding aisle. One just went in as it was. The other was a bundle of closed roses, and I first thought I would just put them in a jar, but then I thought that wasn't much of a challenge so instead I made some bouquets, adding flowers I made with the punch and with a set of scrapbooking daisies. (Scrapbooking and weddings have some amazing resources for miniature-making).

I punched various papers I had at home. 

The punched flowers were easy to attach to stems: I did exactly the same as with daffodils and irises: dabbing the tip of the wire in yellow paint, then adding a bead underneath the flower. I used three layers for each flower. They need leaves, but I don't really know what kind of flower they are and what kind of leaves this flower should have.

  


Then I had these prefabricated daisies some of which I left as they were and some painted in various colours.

 It wasn't until I started painting that I noticed they were also different shapes, which added to the variety.

Now, these were tricky to attach to stems because they already had a bead in the middle, too small to make a hole through. I prepared the stems with a bead glued on to one end.

 

I used strong glue and let it dry properly before gluing on the flower.

I made several pots: 

 

The ones on the left could be anemones. The ones on the right look very authentic, but I don't know what they are.  The leaves are made from a Christmas candlestick decoration that I had had for years, wondering when it might come handy. The pots are bottle caps.

The rest of the daisies, with longer stems, I added to the ready-made roses, arranging them in four OOAK bouquets wrapped in paper. I had to look up on the web how to wrap flowers. There are dozens of useful sites. The ferns are tiny sprigs of live conifer.

 

I have lots of materials left, and I took time to arrange them for the future. I know there are commercial organisers (I have some), but I am a recycler, and I have saved this chocolate box precisely for this occasion.

Lots of space for more.

I have got so far this weekend, and I won't have time to do more until next weekend, so here is the result up to date.

Some plants and flowers I had before, both ones I have made and some that came with various job lots. I plan to have a rail with hanging baskets and maybe some wall units, so do come back soon.