Growing A Cottage Garden Part 2

Serendipity smiled on me this week and as a result, I ended up with some bonus mini time! I put it to good use and continued making flower kits. I stuck with the SDK kits since I was kind of on a roll with them.

First up was the Dandelion kit. I had two of them.

Each kit contains enough to make three clusters of three Dandelions. Because of my particular garden needs, I made one kit (almost) as directed, but opted to make some single Dandelions from the second kit. My gravel grout border on the paths is narrow, and fitting in a cluster of three might prove difficult. But three clusters in the cracks of each of the three outside fence planters should be perfect.

Once the flowers were made, I twisted them into groups of three, decided on the height I wanted them sticking out of the ground, then ran a bead of hot glue at that point.

Then, I cut off the excess wire, squirted a tiny puddle of hot glue onto my self healing mat, and pushed the Dandelion cluster into it - essentially creating a base for easier planting.

And I have six singles to be placed in the narrow path gravel or other cracks as needed.

Next I made the Ageratum kit. I made up some smaller buds based on photos I'd seen Googling. They are not the most beautiful flower, but I made two groupings and I think they'll make nice pots or fillers.

I really love Geraniums - probably because they were always the hardest flowers (in my attempts at real life gardening) to kill. Long after my over exuberant spring fever buying and planting frenzy had lost it's luster, and I'd forgotten to water too often, they were the last flowers standing. So, because they are such a forgiving flower, I thought the cottage should have loads of them. Exactly fifty-one of them, to be exact. But I only had one kit!

The kit makes three large and two small clusters using beads for the flower heads, then fifteen separate leaf stems. Very fun kit to make.

So taking my new found skills from the kit, I made forty-six more - twenty-four with 1/8" beads, and twenty-two with 3/16" beads. I knew I'd finally use these beads someday! I didn't want jewel colors to peek through, so each bead got a dip in salmon paint.

For the flowers, I used Rice Paper that I got from Pierce Miniatures a long while back. It has an almost translucent look, but is very strong because of it's fibrous nature. I colored it with a Cocktail Pink ProMarker, then used a blending pen to create a streaky, more natural and varied appearance.

I used my Punch Bunch five flower corner punch to make the petals. It comes with a removable corner guard that just pops off the bottom in case you don't want it for corners.

One issue I experienced was that the fibers from the rice paper wanted to catch and snag in the punch. You can see the badly cut flowers in the photo below. I remembered that the eBay seller had sent a handy How To sheet with the punches. It said to sharpen the punch, just use it on regular printer paper. So I experimented, and discovered that if I punched the rice paper and the printer paper at the same time, it cut almost perfectly every time. I also found that having the punch cut the rice paper first (so stacking the rice paper then the printer paper), I got a slightly better result. There was a lot of weeding the printer punches from the rice paper punches, but it was for a good cause!

Hopefully, fifty-one geraniums will be enough to make a good dent in seven small and one gigantic window box, plus a couple window sill pots! :o)

But there were still twenty-eight leaf stems to make! For those, I used the Silk Linen Paper, also from Pierce Miniatures. It is thicker and more textured than the rice paper, and perfect, it seems, for Geranium leaves! I used Botanical alcohol ink to color the paper, and my Punch Bunch Geranium leaf punch to cut out five leaves per stem.

Kris Compass over at One Inch Minis has a great Geranium tutorial, so if you can get the punches, go make some Geraniums!

And believe it or not, after all those Geraniums, I was still excited to start on the Daylily kit! The kit makes eight, but I purchased an extra set of leaves and petals.

The wonderful thing about Lilies is that you can make them in a gazillion different colors and have fun experimenting, which is exactly what I did!

I loved the one in the lower left, so I gave it a good try with the supplies at my disposal: ProMarkers and a blending pen.

First, I saturated the center of the Lily petal with the blending pen, then added a tiny dot of green, then blended with the blending pen to give it a soft and faded out look.

For the pink, again I saturated only the tips of each petal, added a dot of pink, then blended into the center of the petal.

They came out looking so lively, and I think all sixteen of them will make a nice impact in the garden! They were so much fun to do, I may just have to make an entire Lily garden one day and experiment with every variety!

I think the next segment of "gardening" will be the herbs and leafy plants. I have a whole Camellia tree to make, but that is going to be a project in itself! I'm watching tree making videos, reading posts from awesome and experienced bloggers, which hopefully, will give me the confidence to just jump in. Until then, leafy greens!

Hope you're enjoying the change of seasons, and all the special things that brings!

xo xo,
Jodi

Growing A Cottage Garden Part 1

Hello Everyone! I know it's only been a couple weeks, but it feels like I've been away so long! Work on the house stuff has taken priority, so my mini time has been in stolen moments here and there. Progress on the Storybook Cottage's garden has been slow! But I do have a little to share, so here goes...

I gathered up all of my kits and flower making supplies - I was surprised how many things I'd collected over time. But with no idea how many plants and flowers I'll need for the garden and flower boxes, I decided to make loads of them. If I end up with extras, I can always use them in future projects, or send some of them on to mini friends.

I have lots of different punches, silk and rice paper, covered wire, flocking and sand, but I decided to make the kits first and see if I could use the supply stuff as a supplement to the kits. I have several kits by SDK Miniatures, Bonnie Lavish (out of business as far as I know but new old stock can be found), Moonflower Miniatures, Artistic Florals and Modern Miniature Succulents + Sundries.

I started with the SDK Miniatures kits. I really like them because they come with everything you need, including the clay pot. Susan also sells inexpensive individual laser cut petal and leaf sheets, so if you want to make more than a flower pot full, it's more economical to do so. She also has an extensive variety of plant and flower species to choose from, and she ships very quickly.

I am focusing on plants and flowers that make good tea blends and also that bees like. I started with Black Eyed Susans, a favorite of honey bees. I noticed in photos that flowers tend to be in varying degrees of bloom, so I made some stems in earlier stages using the kit's paper margin and my punches. The kit came with plenty of extra black sand for the centers. I dipped the end of the 28 gauge wire in Fast Grab Tacky glue (because it's thick), let that dry for a bit, then dipped in Elmer's glue before dipping into the sand. The Elmer's is a lot runnier so it coats the Tacky Glue and makes the sand stick well. This gave a nice bulky center.

Since these were in earlier stages of bloom, I only needed a peek of yellow and a green calyx. Once they were dry I closed them to varying degrees.

I used the three leaf punch for the leaves, cutting off the two outside leaves and using the center since it looked so similar to the kit's leaves.

18 full blooms from the kit plus my 8 partials.

Next I made 59 Conflower. It was handy to have a photo on my phone to reference when coloring and assembling the kit. Another thing I like about the SDK kits is that most come on white paper. I like to pick my own colors.

Next I chose the Aster kit. I really liked the alcohol ink effect on this paper for the leaves. It dries much faster than paint, doesn't bulk up the paper, and looks more realistic with it's variegated color effect. An added bonus is that the top side dries a little darker than the underside just like real leaves.

I also made up some more immature blooms based on the reference photo. The younger, the darker, it seems.

I think my favorites so far are the Sunflowers. One kit makes six, but I had ordered an extra set of petals and leaves so I made twelve. There was plenty of sand in the kit for the centers of all twelve with leftovers.

I did a rough count and came up with 20 varieties of plants and flowers still to make. If four kits took two weeks to complete, I might be at this a while! Fall is definitely in the air here, so thank goodness this kind of gardening can be done indoors! Hopefully, I'll have more flower making and guest room progress to share in the next couple weeks.

xo xo,
Jodi

Growing A Cottage Garden Part 8

Looking at the front of the cottage, especially the front door area, it needed a lot more oomph. So to start with, I wanted to explore some wreath options. I've made real life wreaths before, but never mini ones. So, I decided to go through the drawers and see what I could come up with. The extra ones that didn't make the final cut can be sent off along with some other goodies (when I find time to make them) for some special friends I know...

Based on the supplies I have on hand, here were my options for wreath making and how I made them. Maybe you'll find something helpful, or they may spark an idea for you.

The first material that came to mind was the grapevine material that I used to make the rose tree for the arbor. I have plenty left, but the problem is that it was too stiff and brittle to bend into a small enough circle.

So, I boiled about 4 cups of water in a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave and let the grapevine steep for about an hour.

That made them cooperative, and all I had to do then was to cut a few lengths, shape them into circles, then hold them in place with floral wire.

I had these heart shaped wreathes in my supply drawer. I'm not sure where I picked them up, but they're probably easy to find. Or, using the boiling water method, you could easily make your own. It just looks like they're folded in half, then held together in the middle. What looks like skinny brown twig wrapping them is actually rusty floral wire.

For a super simple wreath, I just slathered one of the heart shaped wreaths with Quick Grab Tacky Glue, then added foliage from some Bill Lankford Creeping Phlox that I've had floating around in my landscaping drawer for years. I cut a piece, stuck it to the wreath, let it dry, then gave it a trim to shape it.

For one of the grapevine wreath circles, I added some leftover Aster stems from the garden,

It needed a bow, so I thought I would share how to make an easy bow making jig and bows. You'll need a pretty stout corsage pin. Mine is about 2" long and I'd say about 26 gauge. Then you'll need an earring back with the circular plastic thingy attached. And finally, a regular earring back. You'll also need some silk ribbon. I used 1/16" and 1/8" wide ribbon.

This is how to set up your jig. The earring back with the circular plastic thingy is the work platform, and the regular earring back is just a cap for the end of the pin so you won't poke yourself getting it out of storage.

To make a simple bow, leave a little tail on the end and slide a ribbon, centered, onto the pin. Slide it down to the earring back work platform. About 1/4" seems to be a good working distance to have the earring back from the end of the pin.

Now make a loop as long as you'd like from the long end of the ribbon. Just before you slide it all the way to the work platform, apply a dot of clear drying glue to either side of the pin. Then seat the ribbons together and let set up for a minute. I use the Quick Dry Tacky glue because it grabs quick, doesn't stain the ribbon, holds well and dries clear.

Now make an equally sized second loop. If you get it too large or small, just remove it from the pin and try again. You'll get the hang of it quick enough! Before you slide it all the way down, add the glue again. Let this set up on the jig to dry. To remove it, carefully put your tweezers between the earring back work platform and the ribbon and gently slide off.

Then just cut the ends to your desired length. Cutting them at an angle looks nice. Bow making made easy! But wait! If you want to make a bow for a gift box, just keep doing this process until you feel like you have enough loops. The Christmas bows below have 24 loops and are made with self sticking ribbon.

There are a lot of ways to attach the bows to the wreaths. For this one, I added a floral wire to the center, twisted, then twisted it onto the wreath.

For the next front door candidate, I thought using some of the leftover Camellia flowers would be nice. To give some additional greenery as a base, I added some reindeer moss to about 60% of the wreath.

Then I glued on five flowers...

Then some additional leaves...

Then punched some tiny flowers from paper...

Then added a bow. I inserted a corsage pin through the center where the two loops met, threaded that through to the back of the wreath, then bent the rest to make a hanger. A dot of glue under the bow and where the pin comes out of the back will hold it nicely.

For a super cheap and easy wreath, I cut a few circle shapes from styrofoam, then cut out a hole in the center, then sliced in half to make it a better thickness. I coated all sides with Tacky Glue to give it some support and stability, let dry, then painted all sides in green.

For the base. you can coat it in reindeer moss, or any fine miscellaneous ground cover in the color of your choice. I had several different kinds of "Garden Growies", so that's what I used.

I coated all surfaces in tacky glue, then dropped them into a small container with the ground cover to coat. Once thoroughly dry, remove any loose material and trim with scissors to shape.

This makes a fine backdrop to add flowers, beads, bows, birds, letters, dried seeds, small miniatures such as a garden trowel etc. It's fun to go through your drawers and play until an idea seems like a good one. You can see how I finished mine in a later photo.

To make the hangers for these, I used 4-1/2" of 1/8: ribbon and a 2.5 mm jump ring.

I slid the jump ring onto the ribbon, then slid the ribbon through the center of the wreath. I added a small dab of Tacky Glue to the left end of the ribbon...

Then pressed the two ends together.

Once dry and set, I spun the ribbon 180 degrees so that the glued ends were in the center of the wreath, slid the jump ring up to the end, then glued the ribbon together. Once dry and set, I glued the ends back around on itself so the seam was behind the wreath.

You can adjust your ribbon to whatever length you need it to hang, just double it and add a little extra for the wreath width and the seam.

Here are some of the ones I finished. You can also use lycopodium to make a Christmas wreath. Just apply the glue to your wreath, then wrap the lycopodium clockwise overlapping the narrow tips over the base just a little until it completly covered. Then just add a hanger, a bow and some beads in your favorite Christmas themed colors. You can also add gingerbread cookie men and cookie cutters like I did for last year's Sweet Christmas Cottage.

I settled on this one for the front of the cottage, but can easily switch them out seasonally or whenever I get a better idea. Do you see those nine empty pots around the step? Yes, I have yet more flowers to make and plant. And I have to fill the planters in the fences, But I did get a couple key projects done!

I turned an old Reallife Miniatures weathervane into one with a teapot rather than the whale it came with. The teapot is a cheap plastic one that must have come with a set of pans or something. It was easy to drill a hole into the bottom  so I could slide the pole up into it.

I painted it with a copper leafing pen and let it dry overnight. Then I gave it a copper, patina and verdigris gilders paste treatment, followed by a wash of Coffee Bean. It looks like it's scene a few years!

Here it is on the cottage. To make the support, I cut a piece of copper tubing to size, then made a strap out of cardstock and painted it with the copper leafing pen. I glued and nailed it into the dormer. Boy that was a delicate operation, but the prayers worked!

Speaking of delicate operations... Betsy - these hinges are thanks to you! I said if hinges are something that Betsy loves, well then, I should try and enjoy the process, too! Man those nails were tiny! All twelve of them!!! But all went well...

And now the gate is finished!!!

So, in spite of the good progress, the "How To Grow A Cottage Garden" posts will continue on. At least one more, I think. I have more flowers to make, fence planters to plant, fences to install, and two back gutters to finish. Then will it be done? I hope so, because it's getting cold out and I'd love to start working inside!

xo xo,
Jodi