Merci Bouquet

A little play on words to express my gratitude for generous bloggers who share their techniques and files, and also to the angels who helped to make sure that I had (nearly) enough flowers made for both shops!

Let's start where I started in the bouquet making process... Figuring out how many vases and pots and décor things I'd need to fill out each shop. I got out my pot and vase organizers and spread out various place holders in each shop just to get a rough idea of how many vases/pots I was potentially looking at having to make up. I was pretty much convinced after this exercise that I would be terribly short of flower stems! And that I would nearly wipe out my supply of vases and pots!

I determined that in order to have enough containers, I was going to have to make some. That's where some luck and gratitude came in! After a Google search for galvanized flower pots, I came across the We Love Miniatures tutorial on how to make galvanized flower buckets. Annie even provided a pattern for the buckets on her web site! We Love Miniatures Pattern Downloads Thanks so much, Annie!

I was able to bring the pattern into my graphics program, then isolate and clean up the pattern for import into Cricut Design Space. For those of you with a Cricut, here's a link to the file. It has 28 buckets and bottoms and fits on one piece of Cricut Kraft Board. 

My first cut didn't include the bottoms - that was an improvement I added after I realized it would be much easier to have my Maker cut the bottoms for me.

Following (almost) the tutorial in the video, I made up many buckets. 

Annie provides another great video on how to give things a zinc effect. I used it as a guideline for painting mine, though I included glazing medium in my silver and white layers and then finished them off with a satin varnish. I love how they turned out! Thanks again, Annie!

And here they are with the loose flower stems arranged inside. I arranged them as best as I could in the empty buckets, then grabbed the bunch and held them together, hoping not to disturb the arrangement too badly, while I filled the bucket with hot glue. Then I carefully popped the bunch in the bucket and wrangled any rebels back into submission. Once the hot glue had set, I was able to turn, bend, spread and arrange them until I liked the presentation.

I bet you're wondering if I really did have enough flower stems to fill both shops. The great news is - I did! And here is what I have left. 

I still need to add flowers to the hanging basket for the peach shop, but I have leftover leaves, a few fuchsia stems and a whole new Bonnie Lavish fuchsia kit to use. I can do that close to the end, though. I also had to make up five different sets of herb leaves, but they went pretty fast. 

Here are the vases I made up for the peach shop. In the clear glass and plastic vases, to hold the stems in and give them the look of resting in water, I used UV Resin And a UV Flashlight. For the non clear vases I used hot glue.

And the herb and flower pots. The herbs are SDK kits, and the topiaries are made up of huckleberry branches from my stash and MBS Squeeze Me Bushes. I think they are the 1-1/2" size. The little herb pot labels are 3D printed leftovers from when I made Tasha's Kitchen in 2020. Playing around with the alcohol inks to get the right shade of green for the herbs is challenging but fun!

I'll save the big reveal photos with everything loaded into the shops for next time. I want to hold back the blue shop's vases, pots and décor, too, in case the recipient stalks me, lol! She can't help but spy on me from time to time! I want her to enjoy a surprise!

Merci beaucoup for stopping by! See you next time!

xo xo,

Jodi

How Much Is Enough?

How much is enough? Though I've been making flowers for weeks, it feels like my progress is slow. So slow that I wonder if I’ll have to adjust my Easter deadline. And, at the same time, I’m enjoying the process so much that I don’t ever want it to end. Truly, I’m just feeling so grateful that I’m allowed to bask in this glorious pleasure. At some point soon, there are household chores that won’t be delayed any longer. There again, I’m so grateful to be married to a guy who values a joyful soul more than a clean floor. :O)

This past two weeks (since my last post) I have embarked on several new flower varieties, though I stayed within the purple, orange, yellow and pink colorways. First were the lilies made from an SDK Miniatures kit. 

It was fascinating to see all of the color combinations that lilies come in. I settled on orange, purple and pink using alcohol ink markers and a blender by Windsor & Newton. When it came to the pink ones, I departed from the inspiration photo so that I could experiment a little. The flowers in the back are carnation kits by SDK Miniatures.

Next up were peonies from a kit by SDK. Here I used Ranger Alcohol Ink in shell pink, though the color comes out a very pretty and vibrant coral color on the kit's silk paper. I gave some of the blooms more petals than others to replicate the various growing stages.

These glorious roses were made from an SDK kit commemorating N.A.M.E.'s 50th anniversary. They came with a pretty square, opaque vase and a yellow ribbon. Yellow roses represent friendship, so this was a perfect color for my project. Trying to vein the leaves was tedious, so I opted to apply veins with a straight edge tool and ink pad.

These gladiolus kits took a lot of steps and patience to accomplish, but I really did enjoy the process. I just took my time and tried to work on them when I was in a peaceful and grateful state of mind. I wanted the choice to put them in vases and/or pots, so only attached one set of leaves to the flower stalks and left the rest of the leaves on their own floral wires as the instructions say. I love that there are buds and full flowers in all stages.

We went to Tasha's new house for dinner last weekend. She is in a rural, country setting, so from the freeway to her house there are many farms. I was delighted to see grazing fields full of daffodils! Spring is really here! Do cows eat daffodils? If so, they must love this time of year, too! Mine are a little bright, so before I place them in front of the shops, I think I'll dust them with a little brown artists chalk dust. The daffodil kit by SDK does not include buds, but it's easy enough to make them up as you complete the kit's steps.

I guess I should probably state here that SDK has not paid me or provided me with anything to promote their kits. I just enjoy them a lot. :O)

For the greenery that I need for the bouquet vases, I made up some eucalyptus branches from an SDK kit. I also made the lilac kit and made extra leaf stems for greenery - there are plenty extra! To color the leaves I used Ranger Alcohol inks. They come in various shades of green, and can be mixed and blended with their blending solution. It gives the leaves amazing shading and depth!

Mary Kinloch sometimes has rejects in her eBay store. They are the laser cut sheets where something went wrong and all are not perfect but many are still usable. I bought this daisy sheet for $2 and had enough passable petals to make thirteen daisies. I used leftover leaves from a Bonnie Lavish daisy kit. They will make great filler flowers.

I wanted to put a hanging basket out in front of each store. I had a couple cheap unfinished hanging baskets in my stash, so I stained them and then filled them with Paperclay. I covered the surface with glue, then sprinkled "dirt" on top. The SDK kits come with dirt, and there is always extra. I save it and never run out, but you can use scenic dirt, as well. I then applied glue in between the slats and applied reindeer moss over it. Once the glue was dry, I gave it a haircut. A moss covered hanging basket.

To fill the basket, I used an SDK Fuchsia kit. I thought I would have enough to make both baskets, but because I wanted a really full basket, I made one complete basket first. Turns out I did not quite have enough flowers and buds to make two baskets. There are plenty of extra leaves, though, so I will go with another idea for the second basket. It will be fun to figure out a solution!

I left the back of the basket flat so that the petals wouldn't interfere with the wall.

I'd like to believe that I have enough flowers to fill the shops -  seventeen different varieties! Some will go in vases, some will go in pots, and some will fill buckets with single color/variety stems. That process begins next, right after I publish this post, and will reveal the truth of the situation.

If it looks like I am falling short, I have the materials I need to make up topiaries, herb and plant pots, or I can just add some more décor type junk. In any case, it will be a fun and fulfilling endeavor!

I hope spring has brought fun and fulfilling endeavors to your doors, too! And to my friends in the southern hemisphere who are heading into fall... I hope the change of seasons is a welcome relief for you, as well!

xo xo,

Jodi

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

Creative Solutions Found In My Stash

The little flower shops received a bit of progress over the past couple weeks by way of adding lighting. I'd have gone crazy here (working candles, lamps etc.), but had to reign myself in. Each shop needed to run from a single nine volt battery pack, and because of this, I was limited to five bulbs for each shop. A three bulb chandelier and then two single bulb side lights to supplement.

One of the restrictions that I have put on myself over the past couple years is to try and use what supplies I have on hand whenever possible. I began to feel a bit obscene buying more minis and supplies when I'd already accumulated so much. In addition to feeling better about myself and my footprint on the world, this policy also forces me to be creative, which is where I find the most fulfilling enjoyment with this hobby anyway. 

So for the supplemental lighting on each side of the chandeliers (which were already in my stash from an eBay lot sale), I made my own fixtures using clear plastic footed bowls and 12 volt bulbs and sockets, also from my stash. I drilled holes large enough for the screw bases to seat a little into the hole so the bulb would only stick out the bottom a little.

Then to make the clear bowl opaque, I mixed a little off white paint and Tacky glue and applied it to the inside of the bowl. I finished the edges with gold paint marker.

Here's what they look like with the lights off...

Peach shop

Blue shop

And with lights on...

Peach shop

Blue shop

The 9 volt battery packs will sit on top of the roof, hidden behind the protruding sign portion of the front wall. I am likely going to add a lean to type removable roof piece to camouflage it. The battery packs were in my stash, and I had extra 9 volt batteries leftover from the last time I changed all the smoke alarm batteries.

But first, I am in the midst of shop fixture auditions and finalizing the color scheme for each of the shops. It is great fun getting to work on two opposing colorways at once! In this endeavor, I am also trying to use up what I have in my stash, though if I need to create a fixture or an accessory, it's nice to know the Maker and the 3D printer are close at hand.

Stay grateful for all the liberties you enjoy, and keep those not so fortunate in your constant prayers. There but for the grace of God go I.

xo xo,

Jodi