Supplements For The Soul

I believe it was while creating the garden for the Storybook Cottage that I discovered my joy for making mini flowers. Since then, each time a project calls for flowers, plants and herbs, I get excited about the creativity involved in making them. There is such a variety of ways to color or paint them, including acrylic paint, alcohol ink and markers. It's so much fun to research each species and then figure out what you want to do! Whether I make them from a kit, punches, cut leaves and petals using the Cricut or a combination, it's an endeavor that completely fulfills me!

I'd collected kits over the years from Bonnie Lavish, Mary Kinloch, Little Goodies, SDK Miniatures among others, and because my projects to date never had much need for purple, I had many Bonnie Lavish kits in purple hues to start with. One of the things I love most about making these fun flower kits is, with a little imagination, you can add supplemental buds in various stages of growth to make them stretch farther. As you can imagine, making TWO flower shops at once, I need a lot of flowers!

For Bonnie Lavish kits, I cut extra lengths of floral wire to make buds. I dipped the ends of the wires in Fast Grab Tacky Glue, forming a ball, then let dry. Once dry, I made a mix of a pea sized drop of Fast Grab Tacky Glue and green acrylic paint in a color close to the leaf sheet, dipped to cover the white area and also let dry. Once dry, I matched the flower petal paper color in acrylic paint (sometimes having to mix the color myself if I didn't have a match ready made), dipped the top half of the green bud into the colored paint, then let dry. These looked like newly opening buds.

For buds that had opened farther, I used the extra colored paper surrounding the kit's cutouts to make supplemental buds. Using the smallest five petal flower punch, I pierced a center hole and then slid it up to the colored paint. Wrapping it around the paint/glue ball gives the appearance of  an opening bud. Using these supplemental buds I was able to turn 3 - six flower kits into 54 stems - plenty to make bouquets and pots in both shops. And, they'll look even prettier and closer to natural flowers.

I followed much the same method for the Zinnias, though when it came to the leaves for some of the buds I ran short. Using this Mini Punch Bunch leaf I was able to punch them out from the kit's leaf paper, then just remove the side leaves. I also added a vein down the center of all of the leaves with a straight edge tool and an ink pad. One kit made 36 stems with these supplements. 

The last Bonnie Lavish kits I wanted to use from my stash were Hydrangeas. I had three kits (and a partial leftover kit). They are so full that I didn't think they'd need to be supplemented, but I'll keep that idea open when I start assembling vases and pots. For the leaves on several of these kits, I have a leaf press that creates veins. It really does add a nice detail.

I also had a few S.D.K. Miniatures kits in my stash, so I decided to start with poppies. These flower shops are going to have flowers from every season, and we're just going to pretend that they are sourced from some magic greenhouse somewhere in the south of France. ;O)

I Googled "poppy colors" on my phone, and the first picture that popped up inspired me. I thought that the melon colored poppy would look wonderful in both the blue and peach color schemes of the shops.

I got out my alcohol markers and decided it would be great to have a color chart of the various shades I have for this project. Sometimes I find that the color on the marker looks very different on different types of paper. The SDK kits use silk paper, the Bonnie Lavish kits use colored printer paper. In general, the silk paper comes out a bit more intense, so I have to consider this when choosing colors. It also takes quite a while for the alcohol to evaporate, so I try to color the paper and leaves ahead of when I want to begin assembly.

There was enough materials in the SDK kit to make 12 poppies, so I decided to make six pale pink and six pastel pink. I also Googled the growing stages of poppies to see if I could include some buds of varying maturity. Using the glue/paint ball method, I also added some fuzzy looking green foam to the tops of some of the buds to replicate the fuzzy stage. I made supplemental buds that were opened a bit using a four petal punch and the extra space around the flower sheet. I had plenty of extra leaves, so I just cut them down a bit to use on the smaller buds.

This gave me many stems to make up a few full pots and add a few to mixed bouquets. I really love both colors and am glad I decided to use two.

After these, I worked on a sunflower kit, then some tulips. I'd like to try the 1/2 scale tulip kit, as I think that size would be much better in mixed bouquet vases. These ones look like they were fed Miracle Grow!

As you can see I have filled up one large Styrofoam tray. Here is the other side with the Bonnie Lavish flowers.

I'm working on a daffodil kit now, and that makes me really excited because it reminds me that spring is only a couple weeks away!  These stems will probably get planted in pots.

I have many more varieties to make, and my goal is to be finished with these shops around Easter time. That is when I'll get to give the blue shop to someone who is very special to me. It will be her first miniature anything, and is the one gift I can give that my whole heart goes into. I hope it turns out as amazing as she is, and I hope she loves it!

xo xo,

Jodi