Blue In Green

Now we're getting somewhere! Don't you just love the point in a mini project where you start to see your (sometimes very long awaited) vision come to life?!? It makes me want to ignore all my other responsibilities and just mini all the time!

How much sleep does a person really need, anyway?

Getting here wasn't all that much work - just the better part of five days. And when I'm making mini flowers and landscaping, the joy makes it feel like no time at all!

Let's start with my inspiration photo...

This combination of blue and green flora uplifted my soul!

In my attempt to capture some of what this image evokes in me, I started with one of my favorite blue flowers - hydrangea. I wanted to make a shrub, but with limited laser cut petal and leaf sheets (purchased from SDK Miniatures), I knew it would have to be a compact one. I had 5+ petal sheets and 4+ leaf sheets on hand which made fifteen flower heads.

*** If you buy the kit, it comes with beads to create the hydrangea heads (seven, I think). You can make your own up with just a few craft supplies below. If you are using Punch Bunch mini punches, the scale ends up being a bit larger than the SDK laser cut sheets but they are still passable. Regular printer paper works, or tissue paper for the petals. If you have Japanese Rice or Silk paper, it is even better. Just make sure you cut the leaves with the veins running vertically.

#28 floral wire, beads, leaf and petal punch for making your own without the kit.

I only purchased the individual leaf and petal sheets, so I had to make up my own bead heads. I cut wires to around 2", filled the bead hole with tacky glue, stuck in the wire and then let them dry. Later, I painted the beads in a similar color to my petals. I made extras so that next time I feel the urge to make hydrangeas, I can grab them and go! I used alcohol inks in cloudy blue for the petals and meadow for the leaves.

I like when mini hydrangea leaves have the veins - marvelous texture! So, like an obsessed person, I veined each leaf with a miniature leaf veining die that I purchased so many years ago. I had trouble finding a similar one to link for you, but I am sure they are out there if you can just find the right string of words to search under. 

Once all fifteen of my flower heads were ready...

I needed to make a shrub frame. I used aluminum wire to create an armature. I use the method taught by Luke Towan, just adapting up from railroad model scale to 1/12th scale. I think his wire length was 13 inches for an HO scale tree, and my 4" bush started out with 8 - 20 inch strands. If I had had more flower heads, I could have used more strands so that it would have ended up with more branches.

My finished size needed to fit a 2" x 2" x 4" space.

After trimming a bit

Imagine my shock when, after only nine years sitting in a drawer (since the last time I used it), my latex rubber had completely solidified! I was surely not going to wait over a week to get more shipped to me, so the next best thing was wood glue to coat, texture and thicken up the wires.

After several coats.. You can also wrap the armature in paper clay if you like. It is great for adding wonderful bark texture if you have the time. I needed to get my bush ready quickly, so I left any further detailing opportunity on the table.

I sought inspiration on the web, once again, for the actual bark of a hydrangea shrub...

I'm happy enough with my impressionist version... Most of it will be hidden, anyway.

Now the fun part! Attaching the flower heads...

And filling in the space with every last leaf I had! Trust me, there were LOADS! Still, my hydrangea shrub looks... ahem... like it belongs to someone who is not afraid to prune! But I LOVE IT!!! It turned out perfect for the space and it looks lovely! I hot glued it to the landscape board so that I could raise it up a bit. Once I get it tucked under a nice bed of "dirt", it'll be even better!

Next up was to come up with ground cover for either side of the garden path. I got inspo from this photo, and I thought I could replicate it with the things I had in my landscape stash. First, a Bill Lankford climbing vine. It is a sheet of a tangled web of maybe coconut husk fibers? With model railroad clump foliage sprinkled on top? If you scroll down, once you hit the link's landing page, you will see other variations offered. Mine was plain greenery.

At any rate, I cut it up, glued it down, then punched out a bunch of tiny five petal flower shapes from tissue paper, shaped them, glued them and added a yellow dot to each center. Blue Flax? Creeping Thyme? Forget Me Not? You decide! It makes for a quick and charming groundcover.

I only used the tiniest petals

You may have also noticed that I did a bit of terraforming with hot glue around both end corners. I had some of the spongy dollhouse groundcover stuff in a mix of blue, white and green bits. I just slathered the "ground" in tacky glue, sprinkled on the squishy bits, pressed it in a bit, then let dry. Once dry I removed any loose crumbs and saved them for later use. Another simple and pleasing groundcover.

And here is where it stands as of this writing. I am loving the blue in green palette! BTW, Miles Davis has been the perfect accompaniment!

Next session, I get to begin Delphinium and, with a bit of license taken, Geranium. The joy is almost too much to contain!

My advice? Go get your hands dirty! Soil? Glue? Dough? Makes no difference! Whatever ignites your joy, my friends! Do it now before you lose the inspiration!

xo xo,

Jodi

Long Range Dreams And Sudden Inspirations

Greetings fellow creators! I am back again and it seems as if I'm on a posting streak! It feels so amazing to be dedicating so much time to the Greenhouse and Potting Shed project, or any minis for that matter! I have much to share so let's get started...

When last we left off I was putting the final details on the greenhouse roof. There was a point in its construction that I went away from the instructions and had to engineer some improvements. You see, the original assembly had no bracing at the bottom of the "glass" panels which made the structure extremely flimsy. It was literally being held together with very little glue. The weight of itself worked against itself whenever I'd lift it off the the walls. No Bueno!!! 

So, I beefed it up by adding support pieces at the bottom of each "glass" pane that braced themselves against each of the vertical styles. And, I added support where the two roof halves met at the apex. Here, I glued a long wooden dowel down the center so that the weight was carried by more than just a narrow glue seam where the two angles met. Much stronger! Also, rather than using the two small triangle kit pieces of "glass" designated for the gable end, I cut one solid piece which removed some flexibility and tied the gable to the roof sides much more strongly. And finally, I cut an additional spreader for the roof so that each vertical style tied into one - the kit only had four but there are five "trusses" including the end. The effort really paid off because the roof is totally solid now and I'll feel safe putting it off and on as many times as I need to without worry. I have a sneaking suspicion that this roof is why you don't see many of these completed kits on the internet. It was extremely difficult!

The next challenge was completely self inflicted. You see, I want to be able to remove one of the greenhouse's side walls because I plan to set up a lot of scenes in there. I not only want the ease of loading and removing minis, I want to take photos that look like they are being taken from inside the greenhouse. Because the kit was not made to be constructed that way. I had to engineer a way to make the walls sturdy. Its going to need to stand up to regular roof and wall removals. I added 1/4" x 1/4" beams and affixed them to the potting shed wall where both long greenhouse walls meet it. I also added more bracing to the end wall where the removable wall will butt into it. Adding all this sturdiness also allows me to have the removable wall off but still keep the roof on!

Before I could go farther with the removable wall, I had to get a handle on where some of my hardscape elements were going to go. I looked online for some inspiration and found many real life gardens with elements I wanted to try to incorporate. The first choice was what kind of path I wanted, I settled on something with a bit of whimsy - flagstone pavers made out of egg carton that would wind its way around flower and shrub groupings.

To allow for some depth in my planting beds, I made my egg carton
triple thick by gluing three layers together.

To color my pavers, I used my tried and true kitchen sponge/water/glazing medium/two tone acrylic paint method to give them life. Man was I having fun!!!

Inspiration photo and products used

I underpainted a moss green around the pavers.

Then I used Woodland Scenics Underbrush in light green as moss/clover/weeds between the rocks. I put down Tacky glue where I wanted the greenery, compressed the foamy stuff into the glue, let dry overnight, then rubbed my finger over everything to remove any loose stuff.

Another inspiration photo had a little wooden bridge over a dry creek. How charming! Using a scrap piece of chipboard, some Woodsies Craft Sticks, and a zip tie for "metal" straps, I made a simple bridge.

For the "dry creek", I used Scene A Rama rock and gravel mix. I like that it has various sized rocks to emulate the different sized rock you find in a creek.

The last task to complete before I could justify starting on the actual flower and shrub making was to address how the removable wall would sit firmly in place when I wanted the greenhouse enclosed. For this, I grabbed some of my leftover bricks from the potting shed floor. I wrapped the bottom of the wall in masking tape, set it in place, then glued a row of bricks onto the landscape board. Once they were dry, I painted them a gray that should just fade into the background (if they aren't covered by landscaping).

The wall fits tightly and will stay in place even if the structure is jarred in any way. Hooray! I love it when a long pondered plan finally comes together!!! This greenhouse dream began for me in June of 2023!

And that, my friends, is where I had to stop for the week. Just a few more chores and I can start on the pretty stuff! Yippee!!!

Hope each of you are working toward long term dreams or sudden inspiration! Whatever makes you happy!!!

xo xo,

Jodi

Lawbre Greenhouse Construction Progress

Happy spring everyone! Though you would not notice any difference if you were here in the northwest US with me. It is foggy, gray with low lying clouds, very chilly and drizzling with tiny droplets of rain. Would someone please tell the sun and the flowers that it is time to come out now??? Ah well, at least here in my work room I am doing spring things - building the Lawbre Greenhouse kit!

While I would never want to discourage anyone, I am compelled to say that it is no wonder why you do not see many photos of this completed kit. Nor can any blog posts be found about building one. It is fiddly, complicated, has loads of parts, takes an extra amount of patience and, while it has extensive instructions, some of them are not very clear. It is "vintage", long out of production, and not cheap if you do happen to find one. I purchased both of mine from eBay: this kit with the potting shed/greenhouse and a stand alone greenhouse only kit. But I am a glutton for hard things and can never pass up a kit from times past. Let me expound on the assembly process...

Kit Components

The first thing you need to do is to pull apart the instructions to remove the included building template sheets. With these, you will make a board to pin the parts to for assembly. You'll need large sheets of foam core boards to attach the templates to, then you'll have to cover the templates in waxed paper so you do not ruin them with glue. This is because for the long sides and roof sides, you will need to use the template boards twice. For the Potting Shed and Greenhouse kit, there are four sheets: long wall (x2), roof side (x2), end wall and door. In the freestanding greenhouse only kit there is an additional template for the end wall with no door.

My Foam Core boards were 11" x 14" x 1/8" and were the perfect size. Luckily I already had them in my supplies. I used an Elmer's Glue Stick to adhere the template onto the foam core board, then covered the template with waxed paper using Zots to hold it in place.

I followed the instructions, using "T" pins to hold the parts in place while the glue dried. I used Gorilla Wood Glue for the wood to wood adhesion and Fast Grab Tacky Glue for the "glass" jobs..

At this point everything needed to be painted before inserting the "glass" (which is just some sort of plexi material). The wood is nice but needs a good deal of sanding. I am not super happy with the glossy finish for the black paint: it is Wrought Iron by Patio Paint. It is weather resistant so I should have considered more carefully before settling on it. It isn't terrible in person, but the gloss finish and photos aren't the best of friends.

In between all the gluing and painting I started on the greenhouse floor. I didn't have many of the clay bricks left over from the potting shed but I did have a lot of Magic Brik sticker roll in my stash. I covered the MDF floor in primer, then stuck down the brick sticker in several rows.

I made a mistake when I used a mystery baggie full of powder to make the bricks with. It was not a good mortar. I think I had made the same mistake a while back and didn't like the results. But because it was a while back, I forgot and repeated the same mistake. Can I blame menopause? It was too gritty and too runny and wanted to pull up with the sticker. I should have used joint compound. At any rate, it was not the look I wanted but I decided I could rise to the challenge and make it work. Instead of uniform brick it turned into an ancient and worn out paver look. Whatever.

Mortar spread over the sticker paper

Pulling off the sticker sheet along with some of the "bricks"

Once it dried I sanded and cleaned up the grout lines a bit.

To make the bricks coordinate with the bricks in the potting shed (at least in color tone), I repeated the color palette from my last post. Then I applied whitewash, then sealer, then spackle for the grout. I applied a grayish wash once everything was dry. It still needs more aging, but I'll save that for when I apply the final aging to the entire structure. That way it stays uniform.

Initial coloring

Applying matte sealer

Turned out well enough for a greenhouse floor

Once the floor was ready I began to assemble the walls. I am playing with the idea of leaving one of the walls removable so that it is easier to set up and take photos. Only two of the three walls are glued to the floor now.

A daisy chain of rubber bands held the floor tightly to the walls while the glue dried

I left the door to open in or out for scene flexibility

The third wall is not attached

I made a valiant start on the roof, but that is a whole new level of complicated!!! I had hoped to have it finished for this week's post, but the process is going much slower than the walls had gone. Hopefully, next week, I'll have the roof plus the landscape board to share. And I also hope to share some exciting updates on the real life family room progress!

Until we meet again, I wish you blooms and buds and a bit of sunshine!

xo xo, 

Jodi